I.

Abel still like slaughtered lamb. He does not answer when I speak. Next to him, my eldest, trembles like a leaf. No one knows what it meant to be the first mother. To raise a child without example.  There were many horrors of leaving the garden. Labor pains and the way my breasts swelled to bursting until the baby drinks its mother’s pain beside nourishment. God’s voice comes to cast Cain out. Broken over the body of my younger son, I think of him. Where will he wander? And after the mark will I still know my son’s face? Yes, there were many horrors. But none greater than this: I had no chance to try on forgiveness. Cain, cast out before I decided to lose one son or two. Cain, my first pain and my second.

II.

Stillness crouches on Abel’s
silent body. Adam stands
beside me. A raven scratches
the ground. It gives him the
thought. On hands and knees,
we dig. The dirt deep under our
nails. All the time I think of
Cain – where will he wander?
And after the mark will I still
know my son’s face? Therefore,
you shall be more cursed than the
ground, which opened its mouth to
receive your brother’s blood from your
hand. But the ground is not
cursed. It sustains us. From
dust we came and to dust we
shall return. He contradicts
himself. But then again, who
can keep their word in the face
of tragedy? There was what I
said and there was what I could
not say. There was silence
crouched like sin and it had no
master. There was God has given
me another son in place of Abel and
not Who will God give me in place
of Cain? I remember each, warm
against my breast, back when
greed was commendable. I roll
my son’s body into freshly dug
hole. Being only three on God’s
vast earth there was no one else
to do it. His body returned to
the dust from which Adam
came so recently. The blood
stained clay red. So much, like
sacrifice, the boy a lamb. I had
not known we were mortal,
that we could die like animals.

III.

Abel, you fell like unripe
fruit, cast down
by the wind. No, knocked
from the tree of life
not by wind but by
your own brother’s
hand. My son. Each.
Not knowing death,
did Cain know what
he had done to you?
I like to think not.
I should like to eat
this fruit as I did
the last. My teeth
meet blood. It spills
warm and thick
across my tongue
nothing like the juice
of an apple. God had said
on the day you eat
of the fruit you shall
die but I knew not
what death was then
and now with two sons
gone I might like to…
The blood drips down
my chin, congealed
juice gone to soon from
the fruit of your body.

C. Francis Fisher is a poet and translator based in Brooklyn. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, the Arkansas International, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among others. Her poem, "Self-Portrait at 25" was selected as the winner for the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize for Columbia University. Her first book of translations, In the Glittering Maw: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour, is forthcoming with World Poetry Books in 2024. She teaches undergraduate composition at Columbia University.

Cecilia Biagini (b. 1967, Buenos Aires Argentina) lives and works in Brooklyn NY since 1998. Her work extends through a range of media including painting, sculpture, photography performance and sound. She received a Photography Critics Award from the Centro de Arte y Comunicación, Buenos Aires (1989); and, has been granted two invitations through the Young Artists Scholarship to the Guillermo Kuitca workshop. Her works are included in several art collections including Toyota Research Institute, Cambridge MA, The University of Texas at San Antonio, The New York Public Library, South Texas Money Management, The Ministry of Education in Buenos Aires, Argentina, The Museum of Contemporary Art, MACBA in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Additionally, her artwork has been exhibited at Museo de Barrio NYC, The Hunterdon Museum of Art in New Jersey, the Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; PROA Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina among others.