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Live Encounters Arab Poets in Translation August 2023
Savoring my taste, poems by Nihad Zaki.
Savoring my taste
I named every sperm I aborted
I scattered it in salty soil
I left it to nature
As seeds of creation
It bled and ruptured
Flowers and roses.
It is the fruit of the belly.
She says:
“Tomorrow I will pick from it and savor my taste.”
As if she swallowed herself
Something in me stiffened like an atrophied organ.
I am searching my body for gangrene
And I cannot find anything to cut it off
I am all engorged with blood
Each cell rots separately
I feel its pain.
Death like childbirth
But without a crying baby
Without placenta and umbilical cord
I carried my afterbirth in my womb
As if she swallowed herself.
Resurrection ends
Mothers stand together
Their wombs opened to retrieve eternity
Their gift to the world.
Everyone is willing to take what he/she gave
Until the world is emptied of its inhabitants.
Only then… will the resurrection end.
© Nihad Zaki
Nihad Zaki, an Egyptian poet and writer, born in December 1987. She won the Buland Al-Haidari Prize for Young Arab Poets in its session in 2022.She is also a journalist specializing in history. She practices drawing and is interested in Fine arts, film criticism, philosophy, literature, and other human sciences. In February 2022, her book “As if it were the Resurrection” was published.