#cairo
Sands traverse oceans to envelop me
within the coercion of a dream of Egypt
as I search the turquoise of the medallion in my hands
to match the gray-blue of his eyes.
Too long have I willed for him
to sail the Atlantic,
stride through the door,
and sweep me from haunting this view of London.
But for now I am left
to my own image and a pane,
so I muster the meat of my palm
within this sleeve of lace
to brush it across the glass for a clearer look,
yet my efforts have revealed
no more than engorged eyelids reflected…
manacles of me.
Behest of self,
maniacal I am slated
to perform involuntary tedium,
hopeful to unlock deeper meaning
within each hieroglyph,
once so purposefully etched in a semblance of bronze.
I long to surrender
to the warmth of the taste of iron
caught in his sights over a tomb blanketed in gold.
I will come for you, Daughter of Heaven and Earth.
Spontaneous peristalsis of phrase
connects with the drop
gurgling through the candid quiet
and I wonder
if the image that now reflects would indulge him,
or if he might ****** the lock of dark hair
that he cropped from my neck with the skill of an assassin
when our paths first crossed in Cairo.
Time has softened the image I hold of him;
his eyes are satin,
burning like a flag still waving
as his army advances over our forbidden dig.
There is something
sensation-like in downfall…
copious saline embodies the fractal curve.
I found no scrolls of the Book of the Dead.
Here in my olive skin I rot like a peach
that’s been left in a satchel
forgotten to dust of the ages
disturbed by picks and axes
that strike with the determination of discovery.
A peach, never to be savored;
never to nourish or to pleasure,
or be trampled by insects
and carried off in pieces
to the hollow of the ant queen.
My eyelids are hard to turn like wet pages
forced to envision a river that is not the Nile
where I am held within the binds of propriety,
corsetted, bustled, and locked out of Egypt
dammed from the salvation
of even an intermittent Dutchman’s finger
by dunes and shores and footfalls
to find words that stream in liquid resonance
where firm succumbs to self and
I can feel passion writhing through my intangibles.
Thusly, clouds form over a city that blackens and distorts
the way a river's reflection of my face
would ripple from the plunging body of a dove,
belly-up, encased in wings,
and two thousand miles from him.
Arousal is a moccasin seethed in spasms
of peristalsis and musculature
toward the beckoning pulse of breast.
Any hope for contact collapses into flesh,
venom sheathes each corpuscle,
and a woken neck flails in judgment
before the truth in his eyes
under the shadow of the Great Pyramid
where Ramses II lies supine
across the Turin Papyrus.
I imagine the other side of me
and where she might reflect when
all that there is in such a study
contributes to my wanting
to wreak my bellied freedom
beneath crevices that sink as crevices do
in downward angled layers
to withstand the ages.
Dark hair gleams in contrast,
more for strip of scalp
than the trickle of red down my back.
Breached like sugar that candid—
starburst wings of Monarchs dripping ancient like sunsets
over magenta and milky mauve in the reeds—
my ankles revealed and inverted to the sky they glean, yet...
his arrival is delayed
when the pistol ***** three times.
The still of my breast compounds
with the steady union of the dark, and
somewhere denial flows with the sands.
So cycles change, like a fable for Eternal.
“Daughter of Heaven and Earth,” written by Dionne Charlet, appears in print in Cairo by Gaslight, the second anthology in the By Gaslight Series from New Orleans small press Black Tome Books. Books in the series include New Orleans by Gaslight (ISBN 9780615801186) and Cairo by Gaslight (ISBN 9781516961528). Both collections feature poetry by Charlet, under the pseudonym Dionne Cherie. Look for the upcoming anthology Paris by Gaslight, which will feature a poem of the same title by Dionne.
Nov 4, 2016
Nov 4, 2016 at 1:41 PM UTC
The first word in Arabic
You ever taught me
Was Aoheb:
Love,
Spelled G-I-V-E
The kind that
I forgot what I was
When I felt you holding me.
But only privately.
Like crossing the street,
We look both ways
Before our hands meet.
Because even though
it's okay for me
Culturally..
We don't do that
Until we're married.
But just like
The next words
You taught me,
Ana fahemt:
I understand.
Like that time
I called you a beautiful Woman..
You got so mad because
You want to stay a girl forever.
Baby,
I never
Want to grow up
Together
I want to grow in.
So give me a garden
To come home to
Give me a heart
I can roam through
When it's 3AM
And both of us
Have **** to. do.
One day,
When we're tired
Of learning each other's language
You can call me Frankie,
And frankly,
I'll fly you to the moon.
Give my very breath to you
I'll keep you so warm
In my arms that baby,
Your blood will boil.
And I don't mean to spoil the fun
But could you please put that
Super cute face of yours away?
Because
Your smile,
Is so bright
Solar radiation
Needs sunglasses.
And even though
You're sweet as molasses
I don't think that Nasa's
Satellites can handle that
Amount of sunshine right now.
I think
"Ana bufuker."
...really? .. "Ana buhfucker?..
Whatever.. Ana bafaker:
I think,
Google translate is awful.
Especially when it involves
Conversations with your
Your dad and me
Because honestly
I always think I'm gonna
Say the wrong thing
At the wrong time.
And I always just end up
Saying the wrong thing
at the wrong time.
But somehow you always
Seem to know how to
read my mind.
So
Habiby. Aomry. Hayaty.
My love, My life, My age...
...And the rest of the poem is none of your business.
Truly. It's between that girl and I.
But I will say this though:
We don't talk much anymore
And I'm not really sure why.
But I know that
Somewhere out there,
In-between all of the ********
Of our daily lives;
There is a girl that
Is going to speak my language.
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
It was the summer my
feet tanned like a gladiator,
my coliseum was more a
city piled on dirt, dust, trash
and under that; sand. It was
a desert summer though pollution
and global warming stole the
'dry heat' notion, burned it
up between layers of humidity and
buried it under the city-
down to sand that touched jewels
and biblical lust.
sometimes I ate pigeons and
sometimes I ate McDonald's.
sometimes I was in love and
sometimes I cried myself to sleep.
my eyes were brown, my skin was dark
and my accent was convincing.
I could have been anybody
tiptoeing between past-dead
hatchbacks and stray cats-
any lonely girl with sleep in her eyes
and fogged up sunglasses,
so why did I stay me?
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 10:33 PM UTC