BY MASSOUD HAYOUN
On Caring
The truth is I
could give a flying fuck
about the pharaohs
unholy likenesses
senseless violence,
gratuitous sexuality,
contorted
faces bent in one direction
shoulders and pelvises smashed into another,
beautiful, little graven human forms
Look away!
you forbade us to have in our home
images of idols,
so I never bought the painted papyrus people sell
when they recall us to the world
at esoteric shops in Los Angeles
next to the Magic
8 Balls and Ouija Boards
also against our faith.
The farther I travel that road,
the further
I am from you,
I’m told.
By the time I saw the pyramids,
arrived at bombed-out little beaux-arts facades
that comprise our dear center of the universe!
and saw there
Monuments to Melancholy we had made,
our contribution to the world’s wonders
a necropolis
towering to the sky
like Babel,
the sun had been eclipsed
by a divine rejection
from a land before time
no longer mine,
and I wandered the complex
spirited about by locusts
arms outstretched
calling out,
and I forgot your name
and why I had gone,
and I prayed
prostrated,
head turnt, shoulders broken, pelvis shattered,
for the next step in the journey
through your Book of the Dead,
singing
at the volume of a Red Army Choir
Level me Up or
Beam me down
or just straight up Knock. me. Out.
And the first born was slaughtered like
a little paschal lamb and
the sea parted
and I fell from grace
without so much as a word
from you.
In each generation we see ourselves as going out of Egypt
And unto it I return,
for so it is written,
so it is done.
Broken Bangle Boy from Beyond
The Broken Bangle Boy from Beyond
went
to Bay Ridge,
Brooklyn, baby
in search of bamia and bassboussa
and stopped at a shop
full of gold snakes with ruby eyes
and Nefertiti necklaces
for we are constitutionally sarcastic
even in our trinkets from the time before land
and the women there
cloaked in black
beheld the boy’s bangle
without touching it
a respectful distance
under a loop
and knew immediately
who and what
he had been
and knew
the inscription in hieroglyphics
that to his untrained eyes
were
some reeds
a pelican
an ankh,
maybe
The Book describes
not just obstacles
but combinations of words
to clear hurdles
in the stairway to the series finale
remember?
each step leads homeward
0 displacement
each wish resigned
If a combination of symbols yielded a spell
on the stairway to heaven
might it be
Let us away into the night
and need not away
not this year or the next
and with those words, the sun would explode like a red lightbulb
in the sky
and we would tremble for the false idols
we’ve made
and regret that
I’ve taken a wrong turn,
so sorry
The bangle was all they could take
when they left
and it became burdened by many
backstories
for when it became an ill-gotten gift
to Sultana from Samra
it was a sweet sign of acceptance
it had belonged to their mother Rozeza
who had lived shortly
one of a host of pandemics
that made her mad in the summertime heat
and madness for them
was yelling at her husband
But as Wassim told it
it was purchased on departure
for in Haste we left Egypt
a sign of survival
for they would take our lifesavings but not
touch our women
unseemly
and because the boy was be-bangled
the cloaked daughters of Magda Magnouna
Banaat of Bay Ridge Brooklyn
by way of boat and
Basyoun or Borg el Arab
knew exactly what of their brothers this was
and what he wanted
without him saying
but the reeds and the Nile pelican
were not a sign from his ancestors
but a signifier of the purity of the piece
24-karats for our boy from our beyond
and they wept for his waste of wondering
if the hieroglyphs
pointed the way back
because they all watched the same
Egyptian stories
translated Turkish telenovelas
beyond borders
and were all broken by something in the beyond
beyond repair.