To Hamra Street
Every morning Umm Nagi
makes a lousy joke
and stirs our coffee.
We look at her dirty nails,
we hold the warm plastic cups and
walk
across streets that are endless
in their endless repetitions,
small labyrinths
we have memorized,
familiar labyrinths
in which we get lost on purpose:
Here is the yellow coffee shop
and another,
and another,
where our fathers curl politics
with their cigar smoke
all day,
and measure poetry
with their sugar spoons
and say,
“The situation is bad again,
it is bad again.”
Here is Modca,
the ancient coffee shop,
where cigarette smoke clings to the walls
like a wild plant that sprouts
voices and memories and small conversations.
Here is Modca,
the ancient coffee shop,
turning into a Vero Moda,
no more spoons or smoke or the clatter of cups,
history buried in clothes,
outshone by Starbucks.
Here is the tiny cassette shop
in which the fat man barely fits,
in which the fat man sings and spits,
and nods and nods,
as if to God,
saying business is slower than old age,
releasing Arabic music
into crowded streets that move
to the inborn beat,
here is the tiny cassette shop,
and another,
and another.
Here is the deserted movie theater
where the bald man sighs
into a red telephone,
then shouts at his wife,
then cries
his bills and anger away,
you’d never expect
emotions
inside the smell of old semen
and posters of movies that never really play.
Here is the deserted movie theater,
and another,
and another.