Lilith, Lilith

When the apple bit me,

sweet pooling into sweet,

I heard cherubim laughing,

felt soft feathered wings

caress each cheek, saw

radiant light cascade down

and knew I was made for this,

vessel of joy and love and

flesh, adored and unadorned.

All of Creation was rapture.


Then hard eyes gripped me,

tearing me away from fruited

bliss—cruel jealous rupture—

shame slithered around my waist,

demanding back a rib

I never asked for, never took,

when his fang bit into me.

---

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Last Syllable Lit, Door=Jar, Heimat Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Azure: A Journal of Literary Thought. In 2026 he won the Rough Diamond Poetry Award and Lazuli Literary Prize, and in 2025 his poem “Odessa” was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.