Terese Svoboda
? The Ark Tablet, written 1000 years
before Genesis, remembers it 2 x 2
unclean/clean pairs, with
? noisiness or wickedness the cause of exit,
the houseboat’s interior bituminized
? with the blackest tar,
Babylonian creosote then
? oil smeared everywhere.
? Noah gave his hundred laborers a farewell party
though he knew they’d all drown,
the moon disappearing after
? the first course. What reason
did he give for the work?
The giants Gibborim and Nephilim
? roamed the earth but not the Ark –
they’d sink it.
? Compartments
for the Sirens and birds on top.
? In this version Noah’s sons
rebelled
and refused to board.
? Ante-
diluvian, basically the Ice Age,
the world covered
? with vapor canopy
? and sea monsters,
thunder and lightning
wicking the landscape the bitter sea.
? Those Babylonians loaded the boat
with gold and silver, and whatever
animals
? rounded up with minimal effort,
? then pushed on to a mountain jagged
as the point of a dagger: Nisir in Kurdistan,
not the Turk’s Ararat.
Gertrude Bell 1911 reported the boat had
? run aground
in a bed of scarlet tulips,
? the planks reused for housing
and souvenir stands,
? the way
? vertiginous spacemen
will mount pop-ups on Mars.