The Banquet of Banality
It was too much—
your friendly chatter
with a plastic doll,
beside all my womanhood.
Too much closeness,
and not enough of friendship’s honor.
You dressed your attention
in a shirt far larger than your frame,
and wandered all night
seeking someone to stitch it tighter.
Fevered listening,
inflamed reactions,
obscene exaggeration,
and a sugar tongue
with no cause.
Your talk—
not just the melting
of social shyness,
but constant calls
of a drifting gigolo.
In the light’s reflection
in my glass,
Narcissus
appears smirking,
then fades.
This woman
stuffs her misery
with your emptiness,
and leaves,
utterly emptied by your absence.
And I—
beneath the weight of analysis and inquiry,
will sleep well tonight,
for I won’t let your butterfly
scratch a hole into my mind.
That banquet of banality—
doors whose insides I know too well:
the illnesses of ego,
the body,
and your childhood—
where it seems your own hand
chokes the other lost in itself.
The other women leave delighted—
They got their change
from the shiny illusion
they came for:
illicit praise
drawn from both my shares.
But I—
I’ll go home
in my white dress,
just as I came.
All I lack now
from such tired evenings
are the symphonies
of your lies.
My Weather Is Fragmented, Beautifully Distorted
My weather is fragmented,
beautiful in its disfigurement,
it writes me upon a page that quivers—
like a vast, open hand.
I’ll hang my first face on the door.
In the wild haste of love,
I’ll let you enter.
This night
lengthens over me
like a mosquito.
This lamp
only illuminates
my fear.
My second face
is dark and wicked—
like a rat in hiding.
The third, I vomit
onto the body of air,
into a bowl of memory,
like a child,
retreating into his mother’s breast.
The fourth is a mask of fire.
When you choke me,
I think—
you are making love.
The fifth, a nail in my throat.
I hammer it in,
and spit out a sixth face
that will never be complete.
The seventh sees nothing,
hears nothing—
he simply cages his sorrow
and mutters.
The eighth
sings to you
in the voices of prostitutes.
The ninth writes poetry
without faith,
sketches you on my back
with a broken fingernail.
And I—
when I sleep within you,
and rise without me,
like a tattoo,
when you forgot my name
and screamed:
“Who am I?”
Alcoholic privilege night
When my beloved is drunk,
I become a wound upon his cheek.
He strikes my chest with an empty glass,
Saying, ”This bell—this is what wakes me.”
When he drinks,
He opens my mouth like a pit,
Searching for his name,
For a button he lost
As we rushed back toward childhood.
He loves me swaying
Between two chairs:
Truth—
And the guilt I know,
When he mistakes me for a window,
When he spills the wine
As an apology on my behalf,
Like the blink of an eye.
When he drinks,
My arms multiply in his memory.
He summons them to soothe his pain,
Asks me to plant my tree
Right here—
Above his eye,
A finger for his throat,
And a final finger pointing to the wall:
“Embodied—as if you were pure awareness.”
When he’s drunk,
I draw back.
He runs like a shadow
Caught in light,
Bleeds me
Into some vague emptiness,
Traps me in a space
Shorter than a whisper,
Inside a bottle,
Inside a child’s nature.
He points often—
As if he’s arrived,
As if I were a mouth
He must enter,
Not merely behold.
Hagar Youssef is an Egyptian poet and writer based in Cairo. She has published a poetry collection titled “A Damaged Memory” in Arabic and she is currently working on two collection stories: “Dreaming With Two Heads” and “One Day.” She graduated from the Faculty of Education – Department of Sciences. She has written for various platforms, including those focused on feminism and gender studies. Her work explores the essence of language, deeply influenced by philosophers Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille, in linking love, pain, and death to language, deconstructing these themes. She is also passionate about translating literature and poetry, reviewing books, and writing journalistic and critical articles.
Lemon Language Paperback – November 22, 2024
by Hager Yossef
Mitchell Pluto 