House Arrest
by Sara Elkamel
There’s a certain light that makes everything beautiful, even the animals we blindfold to stop seeing ourselves in their eyes. In my mind I am a bad swimmer on the shore of a large body of sludge. Each morning I stand back and stagger, like a cow knifed by an unskilled butcher. My desire as dull as memory in the womb of a mountain. I practice my bad stroke on flat, dry land. Always in the night. I see mothers packing fresh meat in plastic bags, their boys slipping in new puddles of blood—which catch the light beautifully. Even in this light, cheap firecrackers fly apart; wreck the glass pelt around my patience. Sometimes, to distract myself, I rearrange the furniture; place cubed meat by the door, and greet the fear like a neighbor. Some days I find glass in the corners, and I am not afraid. I am good. I am good. I am good today. But there are too many days—and sacrificial cattle keep hemorrhaging in my chest. Blunt knifes in their eyes. No one will tell me what’s wrong.
Sara Elkamel is a poet and journalist living between her hometown, Cairo, and New York City. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University. Elkamel's poems have appeared in The Common, Michigan Quarterly Review, Four Way Review, The Boiler, Memorious, wildness, and as part of the anthologies Best New Poets 2020, Best of the Net 2020, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me, and 20.35 Africa: Vol. 2, among other publications. She was named a 2020 Gregory Djanikian Scholar by The Adroit Journal, and a finalist in Narrative Magazine's 30 Below Contest in the same year. Elkamel’s debut chapbook “Field of No Justice” will be published by the African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books in 2021.