Daydream

And once again my love

thirty of us at the twenty-seat table

breathing other people’s oxygen

while we trade alleged ideas

That’s how I take the chance to write

My diary

the story of my great grandmother

Jamila

Walking through the pistachio orchard

a tomato and a chunk of dry bread

in the fold of her dress

And over where she walks

I watch her from the top of a well

a serpent beside me shedding its skin

to celebrate the new season

Back here where I stare

into the speakers’ mouths

plastic water tanks everywhere

The serpent next to me

Jamila on the horizon

And suddenly my lung swells

her headscarf white              

her eyes time-tinted

black dress streaked with red

So the poem’s elements come together

to the sound of workmates putting forth

strategic short-term plans

strategic long-term plans

And while scared of breaking god’s rules

some of them step out at prayer time

Jamila raises her dress to pee behind a rock

and smiling rests in a pine’s shade

There she asks god about his beautiful names

treating him to a cup of coffee

Then I spot it

her gold ring

her last day on earth

Did her husband give it to her

before he disappeared thirty years before?

Or was it a lover?

Her disappearance-orphaned son?

I decide she bought the ring

they decide to end the meeting

And while they think of reward, punishment

Jamila is happily asleep under the pine

her gold ring glowing

Jamila

The village where I made men’s pants

just might be plucked from history

My Youssef was unlike the prophet

his brothers not created

to put him in a hole

His father ran away with those

who would come back defeated

I made pants sold cigarettes

I had a house a shop

a factory

in one rented square meter

I had a gold ring I bequeathed

to the Virgin of Gethsemane

I made I had

a ring a house a factory

a Youssef

in one rented meter

Alas

he became a refugee

This is the message my great grandmother Jamila sent me after she read my poem about her gold ring.

Into the City 

When it’s all over

and you own night’s blackness

you will try uselessly

to light up the rain

You will go into the city

bearing gold myrrh frankincense

but you will find no virgins

Only black frogs

escaped from a whale’s mouth

will be awaiting you

You will track yourself down

in identity papers

in police records

in street names

For hours on end

you will speak to pebbles

by the side of the road

and to a peacock-winged owl

Then when you have lost your eyes

and your tongue is white

you will know

you are both merchandise and market

consumer and consumed

and you are God

and I

The Broad Expanse

In tales of the broad expanse

and far-away islands

where we could’ve been free

where we could’ve been

I shiver

and my heart stops

while I see myself staring

at the horror of the world

like an eagle that leaves its aerie

without a place to hide

In tales of the broad expanse

and far-away islands

I recite what prayers I know

like an ancient priestess

tired of religion’s trickery

In tales of the broad expanse

and far-away islands

I see myself as Zeus’s favorite daughter

Athena

goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare

But Zeus is blind to me

In tales of the broad expanse

and far-away islands

I see myself as me

But my country is blind to me

A Poem in my Head

I do not know the opening

of the poem in my head

A blackbird killed itself

by crashing into my balcony door

reminding me

It’s a poem about an old man

who stands at the street corner

I pass every morning

He is begging in a foreign language

but I do not feel ashamed

A poem where I count Kifissia’s trees

its café tables’ cats

and the pigeons unafraid of my footfall

the excrement of spoilt dogs

unpicked by dog owners

and left to us passersby

with flies

I think the poem in my head is full of fish

caught once upon a dream

to be thrown back in the water

for fear that they would tell me

what the sea does to a corpse

There is a poem in my head

that has no words

but brims with sights

Flocks of suicidal birds required

to know its opening.