Maged Zaher

Love being a construction that carries its own fractures:
- My own assumptions about your mirror
- The illness I'm fending off
My poems are enumerations of things in order to prove that I exist:
- Oolong tea
- Assam tea
- A computer
My logic is flawed
Kissing you is out of the question
So I switch my favorite color
To match your lips

*

Everything here is covered with blood and massive stains
from an ordinary Sun.
They are bearded.
Their women are pregnant.
We were there before everything
got stamped. We sat by the
pool, eating peaches and sipping cold
water. There was an assumption
in our hearts that we
don't exist. So, when they
came, with the stamping
machine that looked like
a simple gun, we were not
ready. We were not scared
but we were not ready.
We were laying around
some were masturbating,
and some were biting
the others to the
point of blood. You
can call that low-key
masochism. This is not the
case of being unprepared
hedonists. No. Nobody was
enjoying themselves despite
all the sexual fluids.

*

I love you twice:
The love of lovers
And the love of deservance
Loose translation from the Sufi poet Rabaa Eladaweya

*

Without deciphering it
I'll spend the rest of here
Succumbing to the absolute
I lost time
In the difficulty
Of being
The air of the body
Is not spliced
With words
Few hours remain:
Unlearning to fear
While staying in top form
Regarding technology

Maged Zaher was born and raised in Cairo, and now resides in Atlanta. His Opting Out: Early, new, and collected poems was published in 2017 from Chatwin Press in Seattle.