No Eulogy for the Undead
Mai Serhan (University of Oxford, UK)
If I unverb you,
unyellow your fingers,
unsmoke
those Rothmans,
and 100th
tea,
I’d untock the ticks
through winding mountains
where someone told me, “Child,
he’ll soon un-be.”
You’d unslap me
by a building,
and on the docks
buy me
t-shirts, one
for the price
of three.
I’d unblack the words
in an elevator
dark
from ground floor
to infinity.
No room
service, still
you’d unspar me,
and I’d tell you,
unfuck you,
and we wouldn’t be
writing a eulogy
about love undead
and boats not bobbing
and a verb
unyellowed
in words left
unsaid.
Mai Serhan is a writer and translator. Her writing has appeared in ArabLit Quarterly, Anomaly, Oyster River Pages, Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere. She is a Winter Tangerine and Vermont Studio Center alumna, and a recipient of the Emerging Writer Award from Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, California. Mai is currently pursuing her graduate studies in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.
