after Ada Limón
The musician leaves me
For a woman with no face
He gives her our dim house
A desert balds itself
Leaves the scalp
As red as amaryllis
The sky is a door
With no hinges
I’m sure I have the right address
I don’t recognize the furniture
My father’s voice says
You don’t live here anymore
It is then I suspect a hand
Around my liver
Well then where do I live?
In the red sea’s uterus
A sand-eyed kitten drowns
Then kitchen accidents
Lime in the blood
Paper flowers on graves
No place to put myself
Blackbird
An online journal of literature and the arts
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Sara Elkamel
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, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and Gulf Coast, among other publications. A Pushcart Prize winner, Elkamel was also awarded Southeast Review’s 2023 Gearhart Poetry Prize, 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 and Akashic Books, 2021).
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