AMMAN, 2018
SARA ELKAMEL
I play with the ball in the well of my heart. The music I can’t stop playing
is a string of lights, flapping in some wicked wind, strangling a tree. The
tree you climbed was soaked in darkness. I watched you coil around it
cat-like. I was new to the city of stairs. I pretended the house was
mine—served you ice cream in the garden. I had never thought to climb
a tree. Now I had an opening in me. I sat in the corner of the world as
you danced with slack branches in daylight. I’m not sure, from where you
were, I was at all visible. Before I left for the desert, I said very little. I sat
inside myself like a crow, its beak agape, its body flightless and foul. Now
the music of this crypt plays with me.
Listen to Sara read "Amman, 2018" below:
SARA ELKAMEL (she/her) is a poet and journalist living between Cairo and NYC. Her poems appear in The Common, MQR, Four Way Review, Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, among others. She is the author of the chapbook “Field of No Justice” (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books).