A Sadness Made of Dough

Translated from the Arabic

Parts of you are piled up on other parts ... a mixture of your blood

and your sweat ... and your remains ... and the discharge that your eyes secrete.

That discharge from your eyes

and the knot in your tongue ... are halfway out to sea

where the sun disk swims ...

in a predetermined orbit,

complication ... !

The thing the sidewalk never mentioned

is that you used to tread ... on it

moving your shoes forward on a plate of concrete

and your feet on a plate of your shoes

and your legs on a plate of your disappointment.

You tune the strings in your head to affect a naive joy,

hiding a skull ... that you don’t want to carry.

You lie in a heap on a board that claims whiteness with a handful of flour ...

and you rise.

You swell and puff out your sadness like a hot loaf

and dry out.

You look for your water ...

alternately soft, then hard ...

and crumbly.

Your forehead turns red

too ... like a loaf!

You’re preserved

in the chaotic memory

of Earth, of its core,

of the ‘preserved tablet’ on your shoulders.

You grow moldy too, like a loaf!

In vain you try to stop your body tossing and turning on the whitened board

on your bed ...

on the sidewalks ... on the reflecting

and reflected surfaces ...

and the ones that absorb light.

Your body always forgets it’s a complex mixture,

that you possess nothing but the familiar shape of your legs.

You look like a vagabond,

different from those who walk with other gaits,

like a man who cannot master their gait or speak their language.

He has no right to walk as he pleases,

to saunter or cry as he wishes.

He has no right to open the window of the soul,

to refresh its air, its dust, and its tears ...

You too tend to forget that you’re also

... like a loaf!

You forget how your soul has been mixed

since you were born and since your placenta was shed.

It was mixed, your soul, it was mixed

with clothes that hide your genitals

and reveal what may be seen of them ... of you,

of women who are wont ... to rip their own pockets

and hang pictures on the walls.

Of boys whose trade is to draw on walls

and on gravestones ... on scrap cars

and to demonstrate in your name ... also ...

like a loaf!

So your soul was mixed ...

homogenized ... fermented ... kneaded ... baked

and sold at stores that violate health codes ...

Your soul was falsified ... and used for illegitimate purposes,

voted on

then devoured ... also ...

like a loaf!

Notes:

This poem is part of the folio “Broken Lines: A Gathering of Exiled Poets,” curated by Laura Kraftowitz and Edward Salem. Read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2026 issue of Poetry.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2026)