Gilgamesh

by Chaerim Kim-Worthington

ta-mar-šú-ma [kima Sal(?)] ta-ḫa-du at-ta Thou wilt see (him) and [like a 

woman(?)] thou wilt rejoice.

it-lu-tum ú-na-šá-ku ši-pi-šú Heroes will kiss his feet.

Gilgamesh was a man 2/3 god 1/3 human

(don’t ask 

how you can get ⅔ of a god from a pairing;

the genetics of gilgamesh are a secret for another poem).

His partner, beloved, was Enkidu,

3/3 clay 0/3 god.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the story

of them becoming human together.

Enkidu, beloved, was made of dripping clay,

the kind that gets under your nails and sticks to your teeth.

He was bull-ish, stag-ish, animalistic,

and if you squinted hard enough you could have seen

his antlers, horns, fur, wings,

and teeth.

Gilgamesh, epithet the flood wave, was mostly god,

with intermingled bits of human.

A human eyelash, a godly brow,

a godly touch but human hands.

Gilgamesh, meaning ancestor,

had ungentle hands (although gentle for one),

and had shrapnel teeth.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu had hands like testaments,

red-hot stars for pockets in their veins.

White dwarfs for acne,

copper for bones.

Listen,

a thousand years before Saint Sebastian

before Achilles and Patroclus,

before survival sex and judicative bias and hatred specifically reserved for gay men,

there was Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

They are a long-surviving trope:

one man dies, the other descends

into his mind, full of fury and fire,

and rages against the world.

Before there was murder (purposeful murder),

there were two of them, whispering back and forth

you are my childhood. you are my ocean.

you are the brush i comb my hair with and you are my hair and you are my fingers that i run through my hair and you are the air in between my fingers.

you are my woman and you are my man.

you are a name to me. you are Enkidu. you are Gilgamesh.