Cairo
by Yahia Lababidi
I buried your face, someplace
by the side of the new road
so I would not trip over it
every morning or on evening strollsstill, I am helplessly drawn
to the scene of this crime
for fear of forgetting
the sum of your splendorthen there’s also the rain
that loosens the soil
to reveal a bewitching feature
awash with emotionan eye, perhaps tender or
a pale, becalmed cheek
a mouth tight with reproach or
lips pursed in a deathless smileother times you are inscrutable
worse, is when I seem to lose you
and pick at the earth like a scab
frantic, and faithful, like a dog.
About the Author:
Yahia Lababidi is a Pushcart-nominated poet, aphorist and essayist with work appearing in such publications as AGNI, Harper’s, Rain Taxi, New Internationalist and Philosophy Now. His work has also appeared in several anthologies, such as Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, where he is the only contemporary Arab poet featured, and the best-selling US college textbook, Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. To date, Lababidi’s writing has been translated into Arabic, Slovak, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, and Turkish. He was recently chosen as a juror for the 2012 Neustadt International Prize.
Lababidi’s first book Signposts to Elsewhere (Jane Street Press) was selected as a 2008 Book of the Year by The Independent, UK. His latest book is a critically-acclaimed collection of twenty-one literary and cultural essays, Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly-dancing (Common Ground Publishing). ‘Cairo’ appears in Lababidi’s newest book of poetry, Fever Dreams
