I passed between lions’ paws
to view a corpse: the Dead Sea
Scrolls in a clean glass case
at the New York Public Library.
Chromosomes of Christianity
cannot bear touching; crumbled rinds
sucked dry, rusty husks, shrimp shells,
life gone out. So worn, a glance
disintegrates them. But in richly-smelling
Cairo, on the upper floor of a humble
museum, under the gaze of an early Aphrodite,
like any American colonial wingless
gravestone angel; among tattered
sleeves of homespun, hand-hammered handles,
in the heart of the culture that birthed the binding
of books, I saw flung wide like wings two sheets
of papyrus, fresh as yesterday’s felt-tip notes,
clear and new as a just-rung bell: Nag Hammadi.
Pages from the buried gospels, centuries-suppressed.
Trust Self, they say, your own divinity. Women
equally with men. Humans share creation’s power,
live what we create, change what we create with thought.
I read these reed marks weaving on a page of woven reed.
The certainty of stroke conveys the certainty of scribe.
Wear out these ideas now, the firm hand says.
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Irene O’Garden has won or been nominated for prizes in nearly every writing category: stage, hardcovers, literary magazines and anthologies. Her plays include Off-Broadway’s critically acclaimed Women On FIre; Little Heart, (premiered in 2023) and Alice in Widowland (premieres 2026). O’Garden won a Pushcart Prize for “Glad to Be Human,”included in her book of essays by that name published by Mango (2020). Harper published her first memoir Fat Girl; Mango published her second, Risking the Rapids. Two of her three children’s books were with Harper and Nirala published Fulcrum, her poetry collection.
Lightwood 