MERVYN SEIVWRIGHT
In the Neues Museum
I feel bare, a clinical space
with dim lights, beige walls
rivaling a hospital, yet I am
not alone, not alluding to the faces
of transients wandering mummies
with headphones—I need
no headphones to hear, to feel
the Kemet energy here, watching
my wife’s eyeliner smear, tearful,
overwhelm by the voices attached
to the artifacts around us, the statues
in glass cubes around us, stolen
from depths of sandy caverns,
silhouettes shifting in shadows
of dark nights on ships. I snatch
my son, telling him not to touch
the sarcophagus maze, we cannot
read the hieroglyphics engraved,
a skin on each surface, the desires
of the dead not wishing
to be dragged from the dredges
of darkness, their wishes
to reconnect to the land
of their ancestors, they cannot speak
through the sandy portals left behind
while imprisoned in this hinterland
of green pine tree mountains
and crooked rivers—moons away.
Nefertiti is lonely. She is centered
in a cylinder room, covered
by a chaos of guards protecting
clear borders from image snatchers,
her one eye is piercing, a poking sight,
her flowing energy spoke to us
across Germany, a serene scream
tremoring under skin hairs, we
cannot hide from it, before her
I feel my intestines pulled
with friction in directions, dripping
pus, a weighted gray-skin-cloth coat
of clouded fog, enclosing water skins
squeezing in, tiring my limbs,
my eyes. I run, in my head,
their voices here are faces
leading the winds following me,
until I can close the door behind.
Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness & poetry craft for humane growth. He is a nomad from a Jamaican family, born in London-England, and left for America at age 10, now residing in Schopp-Germany. His performance poetry highlights include events in 9 countries, with features at The Jazz Café, & a finalist at the UK’s Word-for-Word National Poetry Slam. Mervyn completed a writing MFA at Spalding University and has appeared in AGNI, American Journal of Poetry, Salamander Magazine, African American Review, and 48 other journals across 6 countries, receiving recognition as a 2021 Pushcart Nominee & Voices Israel’s Rose Ruben Poetry Competition Honorable-Mention. He has a pending collection due in Autumn 2023 through Broken Sleep Books.