I, Bride of the Nile
by Sara Elkamel

    after Natalie Diaz

              My bare toes grip
the lower lip of living, a hair
              from the river.
             
              If the Nile is the north-flowing body
of god, then they’re about to cast
              my body into god’s.
             
              Whose hunger am I?
Whose virgin blood?

               This is a wedding
without blood. With split ends slunk
                beneath my veil, a belt of lotus
thorns around my waist.

                Two men clutch my shoulders
like heinous angels--
                death drums in their eyes.

                 In heaven, dark-eyed virgins
sit like pearls around good men.
                 Fowls lay their flesh
on plates of stone-studded gold, ruby
                 blood a pale, far-flung
memory.

                 There is no trace of god
here—no music
                  but the gruff call
of a single wild ibis.

I am no Solomon; I cannot sing
                  to the birds, sweet-talk
the ants. I beg as spears
                  prick clouds,
as men with harps sing
                  my wedding hymn.

                  Hail Flood! Lord of fish,
Sweet of scent!
                  When you rise
in the city of hunger,
                   you unwilt
the bodies of boys
                   and men, O Flood!

Fixed on a cloud of reeds,
                   the lone ibis deals
a dull white egg.
                    It dives slow as the sun
into the belly of god.

                     The angels’ fingers
are growing grooves
                      in my back. My veil licks
their thick bare thighs—salt runs
                      like a pilgrim
through my blood.

                        Silt chains circle
my neck, my tongue
                        dry as wood--
all this hair
                         in the river.

---

Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist and translator based in Cairo. 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, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, among other publications. A Pushcart Prize winner, Elkamel was also awarded the Michigan Quarterly Review's 2022 Goldstein Poetry Prize, Tinderbox Poetry Journal’s 2022 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and Redivider’s 2021 Blurred Genre Contest. She is the author of the chapbook “Field of No Justice” (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021).