Poetry post

Maybe you don’t carry
a dark hot mystery in your core

Except the same secret as everyone else:
the heart and its bloody signals
the dank furnace of the intestines
the cooling lungs that pull the world
through the body in currents
the wet seething sorrowful brain

You could tell that;
It might be enough.

crack the clay envelope

[ETA: thank you, sabotabby! You'd think a so-called scholar would look at the receipts.]

A curious and wonderful artefact has appeared in the mail.

At first I thought it was my copy of The Play of Gilgamesh by Edwin Morgan, arrived under another name, perhaps in a new edition. By someone else. Hmm.

But no, upon examination, it is another book entirely, a dual collection of poems in Spanish and English, called Enkidu is dead and not dead/esta muerto y no lo esta by a Tucker Lieberman. Who seems to be a trans poet of whom I do not recall knowing until now.

There is a beautiful illustration of Gilgamesh and Enkidu embracing on the cover by artist Luis Carlos Barragan.

How about this, then (from the first poem, "How I Thought it Worked"):

We live forever, Enkidu and I. This is how:
when we do not like the story,
he breaks the tablet,
speaks the ibis words: Send us back.

or this (from "Enkidu is Gone"):

Enkidu makes the feathers grow on the hawk

Or this:

If I am the rope, and you are the weaver--
If I lower you into a well, and you rip out the threads--
If a space in my heart lets the blood through--
If we cannot weave together, but you weave and I weave-

That is the first poem.

Thank you. It is a beautiful gift.

{rf}