The People Is Singular

by Andy Young

in the dark
              a white-lit
screen: watercannons

spraying praying
              people
on Qasr-El Nil Bridge

humans shielding
              mummies
books Akhenaton

which way will
              the army
go chanting pours

through my husband’s
              laptop
selmeya selmeya

peaceful
              peaceful
he says

the screen
              shows
screens in Tahrir

gone black
              the Square
itself black

except for
              the flashes
should we mute

the sound
              of gunshots
eshop yureed eshop

yureed what
              the hell
does it mean

the people want
              the people
want the fall

of the fall
              of the you
say they say

the people
              want bread
the barrier between us

and our president
              was broken
by teargas says a man

in the news
              who cannot
mute cannot shut

the screen to teargas
              a fog from
this distance up close

the canisters
              expired dates
made in usa

etched in metal
              in Arabic
“the people” is

singular which
              does not
translate

ANDY YOUNG is a poet and essayist and is the co-founder of Meena, a bilingual Arabic-English literary journal. Her poetry collection All Night It Is Morning was published in 2014 by Di´logos Press. She teaches at Tulane University, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and is a free-lance writer for Heinemann’s Guided Reading program. Her work has appeared in places such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, New World Writing, and One, as well as in electronic and flamenco music and as elements in visual art. You can find her book here. “Far from Her in Egypt under Curfew” was selected as a Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition Winner in 2015.