issue 2
Koukash Review
2023
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She wears his hand around her neck the way she wants it; open—a thing catching the light.
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Forgetting the number of flowers to tuck below her pillow for solstice, she leaves peels of
red onions and dreams of her mother’s old breasts—a yawning brine spring.
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Immeasurable is the spring.
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Playing the dream backwards, the woman plucks pulverized hibiscus from her gums like meat.
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We all rewind our mothers to locate the earliest sounds of loss.
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The salt in her eyes.
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On the longest day of the longest summer, shadows lift from the earth as half-done songs.
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Around her neck, his hand hangs limp as she calls every living sound and its wife.
This poem was realized with the support of Mophradat’s Writing Sabbaticals program.
Sara Elkamel
Sara Elkamel is a poet and journalist living between Cairo and NYC. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, MQR, The Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, Poetry London, Best New Poets 2020, Best of the Net 2020, among others. She is the author of the chapbook “Field of No Justice” (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021).