Poem of the Week

The Eye Theater Closes Its Doors, and Opens Them Again



Sara Elkamel

I took too long to interpret them,
so the dreams stopped coming.

One that lingers is of the two
stray kittens, forgotten without food.

At the center of the dream is my future
body—the old anxiety again.

One of the kittens grows an abscess so foul
it almost ends the dream.

Unfazed by hunger, the other soaks in light
like a cloud. Eyes green as distance.

I run between them like a clown.
Useless as a paper sailboat.

Near the end, my body is a house
of idle organs—a void desert mountain.

Maybe the cats were men—
maybe I was their mother.

And doesn’t every dream mother write
not one, but two, biographies?

A writer once said when endings fail
it’s because you haven’t made a decision.

I’ve decided the dream was a prison
that once was a garden—or a young

old woman’s bargain.


Note: The title of this poem comes from “Eye Theater Closes Its Doors, and Opens Them Again” a photo-performance and installation by Rheim Alkadhi, developed for the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, 2015.

Sara Elkamel is a writer who holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. She is the author of the chapbook Field of No Justice.
Originally published:
October 13, 2021

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