Garden of Eden

By Jane Barnes

I love flowers    they know true
Nourishment      you are one though
That won’t open     you stingy lily

I have taken up swimming at night
Swam as at twelve in an indoors

Tub    with a girl     very sexy not
(I repeat) not practicing     this
the real thing     lovers for a year

every day after school we
yanked off our blouses and
leaped into her bed     Knock knock

at the door     Girls?    What’s going
on in there?     Go away Mom
we’re so tired    if she’d really

understood us she might have died

Jane Barnes has published poetry in Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Bi Women, Wormwood Review, River Styx, and Massachusetts Review. Her stories have been published in a dozen magazines and collections and have received three literary prizes. The tribeweaver, a collection of Jane’s poetry over 25 years, is in manuscript.