I am the sphinx.
I am the woman buried in sand
up to her chin.
I am waiting for an archaeologist
to unearth me,
to dig out my neck & my nipples,
bare my claws
& solve my riddle.
No one has solved my riddle
since Oedipus.
♦
I face the pyramids which rise
like angular breasts
from the dry body of Egypt.
My fertile river is flowing down below—
a lovely lower kingdom.
Every woman should have a delta
with such rich silt—
brown as the buttocks
of Nubian queens.
♦
O friend, why have you come to Egypt?
Aton & Yahweh
are still feuding.
Moses is leading his people
& speaking of guilt.
The voice out of the volcano
will not be still.
♦
A religion of death,
a woman buried alive.
For thousands of years
the sand drifted over my head.
My sex was a desert,
my hair more porous than pumice,
& nobody sucked my lips
to make me tell.
♦
The pyramid breasts, though huge,
will never sag.
In the center of each one,
a king lies buried.
In the center of each one,
a darkened chamber…
a tunnel,
dead men’s bones,
malignant gold.