Cairo Poems
1.
We passed a blank billboard
On the drive to Cairo. An hour
Later we reached the city, watched
Sprawling brown buildings unravel
Like riverflow.
Everything had been made modest
By soda cans and color-faded wrappers.
Honks blared forth in the natural flute
Of existence: the cries of beggars,
Sighs of workers. Everything
Had been made quiet and sand-like,
Blank as billboards.
2.
A boy with his belt open
approached the girl with
her shirt open and said, “u wuld laiike
scarf? Cold Coca-Cola?”
They told me to lean back. Then the
Camel burst like an American model
Rocket. Leaning back, my heart
Rising over beats like a sun God.
I dipped my head from
The heat, stared at the pyramids:
Shards of that same God, his head
Poking out from Cairo’s smog.
He kneeled toward Mecca and sent
squiggle script into the sky.
Another boy brought me back
To sand. He said: “Frum Ahmerika?
Aye haf seelvur. Du u laiike Obama?”
I asked them what to make of the city,
they said:
“Cairo is dead.”
Note: This poem was composed directly outside the Pyramids of Giza.
It was written on a cell phone, which molded the line-breaks to fit the screen.