Tuesday, January 19, 2016

AYA NABIH


Abstraction

The petrified clocks
Are harsh like a wall
And like my writings:
Useless

I have a space here
In the yellow room
And from my place
I can see the plastic roses
Above the refrigerator
Looking like death...

(Perhaps those roses would smile
if the sky rains once over the vase)

I'm – certainly - here
How can "I" be there?
While outside the open window
There is the same scene:
Night and a white paper circle 
That only hides a small area of the dark

When my left hand aches
The right one consoles it
And pets it like a cat licking its young in the winter

I'm here and no one else

The room is yellow
The night is a lake bottom
The moon is like my writings:
Useless

The clocks
Seem petrified
But something pushes me to believe
That yesterday
The roof of my room
Was not so close


               ---Aya Nabih



Aya Nabih was born in Cairo, Egypt. She received her BA in English language and literature from Cairo University. She is a translator for many TV channels and alternative film center. An artist in residence during 2015 in Morocco and New York with cross-cultural arts organization Tamaas, Dar Almamunarts center and L’Atelier de Source du Lion. Her first poetry collection Exercises for Developing Insomnia Skills will be published soon by Al Kotob Khan Publishing House. *This poem was previously published in a book of contemporary Egyptian poets translated by Maged Zaher called The Tahrir of Poems.


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