Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2026.
Collage, poems by Dima Mahmoud.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Collage
I’ll brew our coffee from crow feathers
so it’s dark enough for this room.
We can stain our bodies with it, mercilessly, so we never want escape,
or I’ll make it a charm so morning never comes.
I’ll try it as lipstick, pressed onto your lips,
then we’ll keep copies—not a few—of our mouths in the mirror.
I’ll draw a tree on the wall across from the window,
and with my fingertips I’ll pull its branches
so we can play and swing together.
And if it must bear fruit,
I’ll hide inside your chest like a fetus learning the alphabet,
until I come to you, walking.
I’ll ferment it with raisins, to sweeten the breath of your stone,
when you ask the angels to spread their wings on the ceiling and sleep
while we perform our injustice with a tender whirling.
It wouldn’t be strange to dye my hair its color,
sparing only a streak of white.
I’ll set it free so we can toast to our pleasure
while we let the sky fall like feathers over our bodies,
and then we’ll fly.
A Balcony and a House in Casablanca
Looking at myself on the horizon’s line, my voice fell from me.
Had love flung its doors open wide,
I would not still be opening windows each night and waiting.
I used to gaze at myself in the building’s details,
in the fine dust that drifts in silence
so no one would turn to it, claiming to restore the luster—
in its screaming quiet, its unspoken words saying:
I cling so I may hide, or I stay,
resisting the crowd and the call of roaming vendors,
and a kiss left on the sidewalk.
I will tell the cloud suspended behind me
of my defeats as well as my endless victories.
I will entrust the small balconies along the street
to carry my heavy bags.
I emptied my pockets to be light as I cling to you.
I will not wait for passersby—not because I fear them,
but because I’ve swallowed the warm air of the house
and the scent of its ancient memory.
Perhaps then love will turn to me and swing its doors open.
Only then did my fingers hesitate to emerge,
the morsel in my throat hanging between two absences.
I straightened up so passersby wouldn’t think me wingless.
Your whisper called to me in my armpit,
the rose that had just scattered in my mouth,
your name—which for forty years still gives me the same shudder
when I hear it.
© Dima Mahmoud
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.
Dima Mahmoud is an Egyptian poet and a professional voiceover artist, broadcaster, and radio actress. A graduate in Computer Science and Statistics from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, she has authored several poetry collections, including Spiritual Braids (2015), Challenging the Horizon with a Violin (2017), With Tenderness, He Inscribes His Papyrus (2021), Bitten Fingers in a Bag (which won second prize in the Helmy Salem Award for New Poetry in 2021), and A Shadow and a Tremor – Songs for the Wind (2023). Two further collections are forthcoming. Her work has been translated into numerous languages—including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Bengali, and Chinese—and has appeared in international journals, websites, and printed anthologies. She has actively participated in local, Arab, and global poetry and cultural festivals.