for Mohsen Elbelasy and Ghadah Kamal Ahmed
Block the waterways to the funerary wedding processions
As they march the powdered fascists
Through the streets
Stolen sandtraps dumped by the roadside,
Cloth masks damped onto new layers of skin
Spontaneous combustion of the face,
Fired from the hair down
In the dancing of Burnt Lydia
The New Kingdom must fall,
Ramesside revenge porn
From the Elders elsewhere.
The desiccated head is speaking,
Its aching teeth bursting,
With desalination, a mouthful of tobacco,
A spoon for the brain
And a testicle sewn back on,
A crocodile with its legs reversed,
This skeleton model of itself
In the tombs of the bulls.
Moss-fingered where the hoopoe’s sandbank
Is washed up in silt,
The chough-billed clang and clamour
As the filthiest birds probe the dirt.
Bury the iron caskets
In their cement lagoon,
Padlocked gravel goods
– The sleeping goats,
A dancing bee-bull
In hives of bulls
Seeking a queen.
Wash away the walls of this house,
Black silt fingers
Beckon from the reedbeds,
From the black-slit apron,
To a town that is no longer there.
A sandal bird-scarer
The exploded boot
Discarded of the gods,
And ducks fly as portents.
