“Ohmygod! Eve said” and “abalone fishing”

By Ed Higgins

Ohmygod! Eve said

Seeing naked
Adams’s reflection

in the wishing well
there beside her--

giddily dropping
her half-eaten apple

in front of
the retreating snake.


abalone fishing

after several beers this woman told me once
(when I was maybe 15)

while we were waist deep
in cold Pacific tidewater

having a baby was
            (well) like shitting a football

whoa (I said), noooooo shit!!

amazed, as I slid my pry bar carefully
under an abalone foot

as close to the encrusted rock as
possible, so as not to injure

the vulnerable creature which
has no blood clotting capabilities

which experiences no surprise
lifting it slowly to pop loose.

Ed Higgins is actually the pen name for a migrant turkey vulture who sneaks into the Pacific NW every May-August from Mexico: eating offal and writing poems at a favorite little farm in Yamhill, OR, where every spring they butcher 20 or so fryers & kindly strew the innards out in the back field for me & my friends. Offal & migrant issues, as you can well imagine, are recurring motifs in my poetry. I'm currently installing a webcam on a nearby fence post to add live visual interest to my MySpace blog.