Inaugural Villanelle

Seth Wieck

January 18, 2021

In our beginning when dust was given skin,

and breath slipped in and slipped on out again— 

even when we slept we breathed out and in

and out, a carbon bound to a pair of oxygen.

No volition, our lungs just wending on with wind.

In that garden when dust was given skin

and God gave breath to men and said right then 

it wasn’t ours to sustain, we breathed two words: sin

and hope— that when we slept we’d breathe out and back in.

For every Abel’s breath of adoration,

an oath of Cain. Blood cried out a new jargon

in our beginning when dust was given skin

to consume. Worms then roots then leaves respired oxygen

breathed in by cities of violent men, so laws were penned

which allowed us to rest, to sleep, to breathe out and in.

In every sworn oath breathed by a politician

is the seed of redemption and the root of sin;

an attempt to untangle our dust from our skin

before we sleep and breathe in and out again.

Seth Wieck's writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine, the Langdon Review of the Arts, Tejascovido, and the Broad River Review where he won the Ron Rash Award in Fiction. He lives in Amarillo with his wife and three children, and teaches literature and writing at Boys Ranch High School.