on being erased

human existence, I'm told
is a fleeting, finite phenomenon
if you stretched your arms out wide
you could erase our whole history
by filing your middle finger nail
you could erase us
with a flick of your emery board

I have been erased
with words and gestures
on the streets of that old Nile city
I have been curled into my skin
my hair my eyes my body
the atoms and molecules that determined
I should be born white, and woman
the history that somehow placed me
across an ocean of privilege

and these fateful decisions offend
this city... they have their revenge every day
whether they say 'let's fuck' or call me beautiful
whether they grab at my thigh
or cheerfully apply the tax levied
at the color of my skin
we are no more real to each other
than those ages of human history that came before us

I in my sinful paleness and un-hidable difference
They in their power, roving in packs of impunity
We blot each other out under a too-harsh sun
they cover me with acid, venom that takes
the weight and worth out of my being
and I dismiss their humanity with my spit
Across an ocean I might be the powerful one, but here
they can erase me
with a glance of their eyes.

dark matter

We only know blue for the sky
no other skies have scampered across this
windy unreachable expanse in our lungs
and over our heads.
The scientists have determined there must be
such things as dark matter, dark energy
invisible, unknowable bulk
that keeps the universe from crumpling
like an old shopping receipt
and slurping life's potential away
into skies that are no longer blue--
but they cannot find it.
Well, you can tell them I found it
I know where it lurks
all the dark matter has gathered in
corners of an old Nile city.
On the streets are acres of choking dust
in the alleys, shreds of plastic, fluttering
behind every creaking tin bus, a spew of
such dark matter, it erases the air
and the dark energy, I found that too
mountains of it
in the leer of young men with no future
or the aggressive salespitch of a child
selling tissues.