ON THE RIVER: A NILE LAMENT IN TWELVE PARTS

I

We’ve only just begun
Grasp the twisting mire of this history

On the road to criminal ancestry
A sheath gone wander

Expose the blade to human gully
Trenched by libations

Vital flow
Run thin

II

Imesti
Jar with a head like mine

Hold the liver of a brother thieved
Qebehsenuef

Trade your contents for cash
Sudan’s organs

Like blood diamond
Money for the caliphate war

III

Lord, this yoke
This tailored refuse

We’ve tasted with our tongues
Driven with our spirits

Sung with our limbs
Resurrected with our eyes

Sequestered your tally and vowed
That deliverance will come

IV

The bridges have been burned
Brethren

But we are also of water
And need not the passage

Born with fire on our tongues
We breathe our children’s repose

Arrived in a place so strange
The trees lean wrong

V

There is power in a single act
Resistance in a bearded man

A woman who walks this earth
Knowing her strength

And somewhere across the Atlantic
Bones—bones—bones

Covering the ocean floor
Like sand granules

VI

No one speaks the story of the woman
Who cut her hair in pine

Let each strand go
Down river

No one tells the truth of the man
Who only dreamt to feed his children

Gave his dignity for bread
And entreated the sun for blindness

VII

And their eyes still scourge us
Buried beneath our skin

Frayed like a fern leaf
We are torn between two lines

Migratory foot paths
Leading to a new haunt

Refugee tents where dreams are made
Hair parted by blood

VIII

The minarets curve like dandelions
Uneasy in their own tendency

A bird of the sky, recluse in haze
Dots the horizon like satellite dishes

The men on their knees, aiming towards space
Touch concrete to root ground

Prayers take flight
And find their home in elevated ears

IX

Young boys float
So as not to disturb the fallen

Feet suspended in air
The earth a graveyard

Soldiers for twisted desires
Troopers for power lust

They dream of balancing bread on their palms
Pedaling bicycles in a new direction

X

Roadways skirt the farm
Too close to spire and mortar

Drag stalk to earth
Make bails in the shadow of bricks

Up river there is a tumbling
Down the bank like billowing smoke

Children live in liquid contour
Edfu and electrical towers

XI

Race to grace the Nile
Salve from heat

Lily expanse in the crane’s path
Island marsh, in the center of this river

One push from shore
One paddle to touch

Doum shade points
Haven in the right direction

XII

East from here, Moses split the sea in two
In the country of waiting

Made the crag peaks into home
In the land of duality

Serket, stone-memory
Hold the rock as evidence

Make your children to feel their weight
Compass their spines towards rectitude