At the Gates, Mikhail Makes Me a Feast of Rain and Dirt

Editor’s Note: Hazem Fahmy was a finalist for the 2019 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest and this poem appeared in our arts anthology Allies.

Hazem Fahmy

Arts in Society
, Poem

07/30/2021

For which I'm truly grateful.

I've spent a lifetime dreaming

of cities wide enough

to hold me. I have feared open

roads; the seduction of

the unfathomable. All my life

I have prayed for a soil

unburdened by time, say an

Eden of a nap. And yet,

I sit before him alone.

He asks me about my kin

and country. I say: I am

sorry if I ever spoke

out of a mouth that was not

mine. I say ‘we’ and hope that means

something. I don’t pretend

to know where ‘we’ live. If there

is a place for ‘us’ I have

known it only by name, but

never map. I have looked for ‘us’

on the highway, only

found sirens, restless screeching;

choir of dust, shriveled lotus

by an empty bank. Maybe

‘we’ are all just in love with

scorched temples, dead languages.

Every dry river has a lake

for a mother, and I am tired

of the violence of water;

how it holds the still land

with its ego. Somewhere,

there’s history without

burden. There is an ‘us’ I don’t have

to wash of blood and

kerosene. Cut off my tongue

if I claim I know what it

looks like, but hear me when

I say it does not smell

like gated flowers, or stale fear

underneath a thick blanket.

I know I too am guilty

of this legacy. I have praised

the dirt I have spat on

only when it grows

what I ask of it. I've dug a grave

for every nightingale

who sang too loud. And for that you

can call my mouth rotten, but

never rested. الحمد لله

Insomnia’s the only

vocab my city ever

gave me, and I speak it well,

let it overflow from my open

mouth unto the tired

earth. I know ‘we’ have all grown

weary from the taste of rust,

how it's brittle trauma makes

a home out of our teeth. But

find me a history that

has ever undone ‘us’ and

I will go to bed tonight

unfazed by the summer. He

says: it is foolish to fear

the dark. I say: God gifts us

the night, and for that I am

eternally grateful. There

were days when I wished myself

small enough to die

in the flame of a lantern, but I

have settled for that music

which shakes the stillness. I have

mocked martyrdom’s allure, I am

weak يا ربى I was

never near Bilal nor Omar.

Forgive me my timid jaw,

my quiet hands. They only

want to build.

About the Author

Hazem Fahmy

Pushcart-nominated poet and critic from Cairo.

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