POEM
Queen of Cities
As the dust rises in the morning swelter, the men,
overseeing the day’s bartering, part, hushed tones
halted by the female retinue, their eyes, cast
beyond the diaphanous veil.
Flanked on both sides, her robe is paradise green,
embellished with cloth of gold, and offsets her
russet hair, piled high beneath her headdress,
tapered into an apex.
This draws this stall’s vendor’s eye towards the sun,
its arc beyond her and the cross-hatch of the
metal-clad window, before his gaze is enticed
by the manicured hand,
Emerging from the swathes of imported silk.
Her gesture induces whispers of Hayret! Oha!
sighs sheathed with modesty, the men chuckle
knowing what lies beneath.
The lady stoops to scrutinise the obscured depths
of a terracotta pot, poking above the rim, their eyes
and antennules test the wormwood-scented haze,
then descend, dragged,
Back into blackness. Roxelana stands in silence,
awaits a lone head to breach the atmosphere,
its face of cantaloupe hue, unseen in the souk,
for a millennium,
Ascendant on the backs of its jet-shelled kin, their
obliging tessellation around the vessel’s confines, yes,
the harem knows a woman’s wiles, Suleiman expects
lobster for dinner.
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