print previewback EMILIA PHILLIPS
Covenant
No words could
describe the
sounds, no
unvoweled
onomatopoeia
could capture
the animals’
distress, the giraffes
kneeling like
lambs, unable
to stand, necks
boaed around
their tiny
enclosure.
Sometimes
I’d take out
the mice
and hide them
in my dress
pocket where
they’d fit
themselves
together
like the dark
and bright
sides of a half
moon. This,
their whiskered
movements
just above
my breast,
gave me
the sense
I was living
in a body
again, something
lost to me
when I boarded
the extinction.
Before, I kept
begging
Noah to build
slower, much
slower, to never
finish, to save
the world
by never
hammering
the last nail
into the ark. What
did I know,
he wondered
aloud. I was
just a vessel,
like the ship. The new
mother
to the world—
and to it,
to God and
to my husband,
like the animals,
captive stock. 
Antediluvian
Covenant
Diluvian
Postdiluvian