Skip to main content

Poetry | شعر

DUST IS DEAD SKIN

CONTRIBUTOR
المساهم/ة
Mai Serhan

TAGS
الوسوم
posts-issue10

SHARE POST
للمشاركة
CONTRIBUTOR المساهم/ة
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 for Return is a Thing of Amber, and the Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award for her collection, CAIRO: the undelivered letters.

WORKS BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR
أعمال للمساهم/ة
Mai Serhan
Poetry | شعر

DUST IS DEAD SKIN

By Mai SerhanSeptember 2, 2022October 17th, 2022No Comments

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 

Author

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 for Return is a Thing of Amber, and the Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award for her collection, CAIRO: the undelivered letters.

Close Menu