Out of the Strong, Something Sweet

TRACI BRIMHALL

Out of the Eater, Something to Eat Out of the Strong, Something Sweet

It doesn’t always end with temple pillars falling in on the blind, but hubris is common in the rising action. The love story is part

introduction, part climax. Before Gilgamesh, in the privacy of grief, went through scorpions and smoke to find the amaranth rumored

to resurrect, he and Enkidu bathed each other in the blood of a bull. And before Ishtar went to unhook Tammuz from the barbs binding

his flesh to the underworld, she unstrung the corn silk from her hem, humming his name. The ecstasy that rouses me from sleep pulls

at my hair like Samson, my heart a bell clamoring at the beloved’s ghost-smell on the pillows. When he died, it struck like green fruit

on the earth. But in the before, sadness rose out of us. Happiness fell like a god diving into a swan. The heart thrashed toward

the brightness that would sever its stem. Somewhere lions still roam, so magnificent they can’t understand weakness, the honey still unmade

inside them, bees circling and clueless their hive will span spine to pelvis. Samson, then, still riddleless, his bride still a girl,

unburned. What he would pay for her was still in his pockets, the strength to rip the jaw from a lion still roaring in his hands.