subtlety: an assay

midrash qatan* on Genesis 3

by Matthew E. Henry

she asked if an intersectional, 
antiracist reading
would recast the serpent as white, 
male, cishet. upper 
middle class. comfortable 
salaried job. 401(k). 
twice divorced. single. 
childless. expensive looking 
suits. nice-ish shoes. 
leased luxury car. 
confident in his approach— 
speaking with his full chest,
no sibilant whispers—to 
the woman at the bar 
beside her wife. deftly 
coiling rhetorical questions 
into the “well, actually…” 
of his intent. she said, 
it all makes sense. after 
getting the response he came for, 
losing his legs seems 
to bother him less than being 
interrupted by a woman. 

*midrash qatan (“a little story/exposition”) pays homage to the Rabbinic genre of Midrash Rabbah  (“a great midrash”).

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Dr. Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the Boston-born author of the full length collections the Colored page (Sundress Publication, 2022) and The Third Renunciation (New York Quarterly Books, 2023), the chapbooks Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020), and the micro-chapbook have you heard the one about…? (Ghost City Press, 2023). He also has a collection forthcoming from Harbor Editions (said the Frog to the scorpion). MEH is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes, an associate editor at Rise Up Review, and is the 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize.