What a dream I had — or film? — of Westerners in Araby: 30s set scene, sepia. Streets of clutter-crush and rot.
Hot. Hot.
Quadrupeds loped burdened, or roasted, skewered above pits where veiled women bellowed sparks, coaxing flames to rise like cobra. Some sang, as they bellowed. (joyfully? perhaps not — their voices seemed so strange).
Shirtless children sold the news.
Fez Men, Fez Men, Fez Men grinned. They were not pleased.
“Can’t smell,” I cried. “I can’t. Smell.”
Made sense, these non-scents flickering non-linear Time of cinema/dream. As did the Opium yen to (must I really, really must I must, I must) inhale:
Anxiety burned misery. Streaks of electric Other — magnetic arabesques! — drew me to the light, where I sizzled in my colonial white suit, removing neither hat nor tie.
Some critics have called Yizhak Maplebury “a poet of no small importance.” Others have called him “a small poet of no importance.” Little is known about Maplebury as he exists beyond the page. Unproven rumors have abounded that he was (and perhaps still is) a notorious gang-land/CIA hit-man, code-named, “The Egghead,” whose method of dispensing “justice” (for those who pay – him – unto those who most egregiously fail to pay the ones who pay -- him) inspired fear in the hearts of even the most jaded power-brokers on the world information/money market. The notorious NYC mobster, Boss Parcheesi, for instance, was mysteriously abducted from the locked vault he'd had himself sealed into, only to be found, what remained of him at any rate, in a New Orleans tobacco store, in a tin of what an unsuspecting, quite obviously horrified, customer had assumed, upon purchase, was a can of vacuum-packed, safety-sealed, fine Virginia pipe-tobacco. Again, these allegations are unproven. Anyway, what does it matter what Maplebury did – or does – to earn his “living?” We modern readers are not concerned with the life of the artist, but the value of the work...
Read other articles by Yitzhak.
This article was posted on Tuesday, June 4th, 2013 at 12:24pm and is filed under Blowback, Colonialism, Egypt, Middle East.
