Poetry: What Poetry Does

By Aya Al-Telmissany

See what Poetry does—it escapes me

Like a child playing hide-and-seek

Concealed in the most obvious places thinking

That I don’t see it. But I do. I pretend,

Lest it learn to hide better and deprive me

Of the pleasure I take in watching it.

See what Poetry does—it serpents

With the milk in my coffee and I

Drink it. I feel it in this late autumn breeze; it carries

The smell of wilted jasmine and fallen skies and I let it

Embrace me. See what Poetry does—

It hides between the vibrations

Of his vocal chords when he laughs and if I listen closely

I can almost see it gently pulling the lines like a harp player.

See what Poetry does—it hides within the weave

Of my veil and rains with the fringes at its edge.

See what Poetry does—it sleeps

Folded in words between the pages

Of my books, waiting for me to

Wake it up. To speak it. To give it life.

***

Aya is a poet, translator, and scholar. She has a Master’s degree in English and comparative literature, with a focus on women’s poetry, from the American University in Cairo. She is now pursuing a second Master’s in Interdisciplinary Middle-East Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She writes poetry in English and French and has been published by Anomalous Press, Poésie en Liberté, and Haus Für Poesie. She also won the Madalyn Lamont Literary Award in 2018 and 2022.