The Plains of Shinar

By Jacob Dimpsey

oh, but cain, i was never going to be what they 

prophesied i would become. this mud hardened 

into brick too soon and now columns lie prone 

in the sun where we left them because they cracked from 

corinthian curl to base before they ever left the quarry.

you hated that the earth loved me, that i planted 

an olive grove and it grew. so you hunted and ate 

fallow deer and sacred ibis and the people scorned you for it. 

cain, i still feel your jawbone against mine 

and the weight of the dust you piled over me. 

now, nothing grows where you left me. 

mother still lays lilac and salvia divinorum 

at my grave every spring. but even the false prophets

have already forgotten me and you, 

you built your city where the ground never knew me. 

we are already history, cain. 

whoever we were, we aren’t 

anymore and nobody even remembers

that we were the first—you, the first to kill,

i, the first to die. 

you built a city of stone on the plains of shinar 

and already it’s been reduced to debris, eroded and 

carried by the wind to a desert far away along with 

the remains of countless other cities built by 

former kings far greater than you ever were.

and still, there you are, on your knees 

in the dunes, scooping sand into a sieve, collecting 

the bits of glass and bone and column fragments of 

what you used to call yours. and i’m here,

where everything beautiful is far away. 

don’t you remember when we talked of building a city

together? when we went to the quarry every day to press

mud into bricks? cain, do you remember when we were

children and you lifted me onto your shoulders so i could 

reach the spring blossoms on the highest branch? 

while you crushed their petals into perfume, 

i placed a stray flower behind your ear. you snatched

it from your hair with a hand still stained red with 

the blood of a slaughtered oryx and threw it 

under your grinding stone with the rest. 

Jacob Dimpsey is a senior creative writing major from Lykens, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Essay, The Sanctuary, Flock literary journal, as well as previous issues of RiverCraft.