Post by Emad Fouad on Jul 26, 2007 18:35:02 GMT -5
The truth: I have five fingers on each hand
I have taken
the bus I just got off of
with regularity
for five whole years
two times a day
That same bus
that pours poisonous fumes in my chest
I just got off of
with an abrupt
calculated jump
Only when I sleep
there are needles in my lungs.
Mother alone knows:
Nothing but the smoke causes this cough,
The cough,
A vein always swells when my thigh
meets the roundness of my belly
When I cough
I have felt dirty for a week.
Where I put my five fingers to my chest
and scratch
my nails would come out black and greasy
-I am young, I know -
All my childhood
I hoodwinked the old man at the trinket store.
When he turned around
I would steal anything my short arms
could get hold of.
I continued to steal
with untiring seriousness.
The fingers that will become black and greasy
The fingers that emptied out the
Merchandise of the senile man
Into my school bag
The same fingers
My cousin bit into
When he learned of my game to rebuke me,
to warn me against it being discovered,
he threatened me first:
“I’ll tell your mother if you don’t quit!”
But I was sure he wouldn’t.
I,
The stubborn liar,
his fingers skilled in pulling the trigger
blushed as they patted my head.
The sucker.
How could he believe the blushing of my cheeks
and disbelieve his doubts about me?
My fingers small
and blue in the cold
when I put them in the pocket of his wool jilbab
and scratched at the fineness of the bills
and came out with twenty new Egyptian pounds
It was easy
my heart beat violently
and my joints shook
for just a moment.
The same space
between the bathroom window
and its wooden frame
makes me cut my bath short
with a sudden shiver
so I pull – with my five fingers –
the robe around me
and go out trembling
and wet.
Until now
my fingers grow with a patience I’m unaware of
nor see with the same sunken marks
and the lines of fingerprints
in the manner of the shy veins
on the hands of strangers
and new friends.
I’ll tell you the truth:
I have five fingers
on each hand
and five siblings:
two sisters and three brothers
A father
who killed five peasants
for an insult that made his blood boil
A mother
who cared for us equally
with the chickens and the geese.
My mother is a country woman
who never learned to read or write
to teach us the alphabet
before our baby teeth fell from our mouths
just
a smack from her fingers
on the back of our small hands
was enough
to leave a blue circle
and the beautiful pain.
Still now my eyes flash for those fingers
with defeated fragility the fingers
that taught me
the importance of being criminal
by instinct.