Nefertiti’s Ugly Sister, Or What You’d Never Do
What Nefertiti did
Could never have been right
In this world
Because when she peels forth
Embittered from the plaster
Of my walls
And headlong
Into the stamp of my back
Her vapors of blood mist over cheap tiles
And in my eyes
As modesty is waged
In a night’s refusal
To sleep with the groom
While my type of loving
Is as dainty as
Solicitors at your door
As our pilgrimage rights revoked
And my beauty could never tiptoe
On thick legs
Up your stairs
Trail my silver-branched hair
On your boots
Honeymoon on Egypt’s buzzing flies
And molten crowds
When all we do is
Ash the streets with our
Landless couple’s hand-in-hand
When you won’t stop to unhook
Fingers with Nefertiti’s ugly sister
And sip from the weightless head
The hollowed bust
A bronze-scarred face unstirred
Under sediments of crown
And then publicly kiss my frown
My chipped ear
My missing pupil in one eye
Nahrain Al-Mousawi 