Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall [The Rumpus]

from Traci Brimhall’s our lady of the ruins:

Become the Lion

We keep my sister alive by force,

pin her down and nurse her with raw

eggs from the chickens that did not drown

and milk taken from a goat staked

to the ground. The dull tolling of the bell

around her neck speaks as she moves.

Here, I am here. She wanders to the river,

and we find her. In a tree, singing

to a starling, we find her. We dig a grave

for the missing body, but nothing

consoles her. In mourning, the cure

is the sickness. A year ago, a lion

took our mother as she tended the fire.

This hunger bewilders me. We found half

of her bones and buried her

uneaten heart in a dead cub’s rib cage.

When we returned three days later

we saw no bones, no heart, only tracks

in the sand leading east. Ghost me. Fossil me.

Resurrect me near dawn. We’re always at the mercy

of one menacing grace, one rite, an art

that makes us suffer twice. At night we wait

with our knives where the tall grass begins.

We will kill it or die or become the lion.

Late Novena

I can’t tell you where I found the lion or what it had

in its mouth, but I can tell you all the old stories

are about sacrifice, like the beggar who chained

church bells around the neck of a lamb and offered it

to the river. I can tell you the old secrets —

how an albatross found the ocean floor but had to die

to reach it, or how the soul is exiled to the body,

the body an interruption between shadow and light.

I can whisper that an army buried in the desert will rise again

when the sun dies, or tell you the force tugging

planets toward a star is called longing. A black hole

is called beautiful. I tell you a word’s sharp edge

can split the stitches binding your unrepentant lips.

Come back. Tell us what you’ve seen. Tell us

you met a god so reckless, so lonely, it will love us all.