Dear Editor,
Sky’s without a pore
tonight, it cannot sweat
and all the slums of Cairo
have lost to dust
as far as the eye can see
I see nothing, only the then
in now, yet there
is all but out of sight
Dust is skin, they say
dead—once
mouth to mouth
breasts, bellies, legs
spooned on brass beds
gathering hands
together wrapped past
houseboats on the Nile,
or did we not, once?
Dust is a whore I loved and she’s everywhere
the cabarets on Haram Street
pumping heat into men
spinning her long hair like a fan
lapping cash on sweaty chest
and in this dust on my mirror
I run my index finger down
to see is a sliver of me, clearly
the rest is all old pollen and hair
and stars undone and done exploding.
A megalopolis, a humdrum,
and a Sphinx stunned by god
knows what, heart
drops in dark, raw drawers,
I close, I open,
look for a love lost to emerge.
Light is a lie, I say
flicking the switch
just look at all
those shutters and haze like cotton thick
I light the incense, burn
the hash, until my mind
is ash and skin is elsewhere,
gone.
Stay well,
A Cairene
Mai Serhan
Mai Serhan is a writer, editor and translator. She holds a BA in English & Comparative Literature and MA in Arabic Literature from the American University in Cairo, as well as an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. She is the winner of the Narratively Memoir Prize forReturn is a Thing of Amber, and the Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award for her collection,CAIRO: the undelivered letters.
