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Poetry || SubmissionsAnd that evening, late, the sirenBy Alan MumfordTowards the end of the war trade in the evenings on Dizengoff picked up.People came to sit again at the cafe tables, with their gas-mask boxes, and atropine injectors, and tubes of grey powder for sprinkling onto nerve gas. And that evening, late, the siren had remained silent; everyone was tense with waiting, unrelieved. Men and women sat together, and alone. They noticed the yellow of the lamps, the sound of the coffee machine’s escaping steam, the chatter of a voice among other voices far away. Drinking their coffee it seemed that they were absent from their bodies, existent only in tension, floating; until they rose to walk, when the air was heavy on them. This man sits, as he likes to do, at a corner table of the shallow terrace. He likes to read from the poems in front of him and then to scan the street for daydreams, such as a man’s face, and if he has killed, or a woman’s body, and was it kissed earlier, and the interaction of students, and do they know anything, are they cutting through the shit, seeing their betrayal, how they are meat to be ground? At the next table he hears a man ask another man if he thinks that a thought could be an airborne virus, and that this is how ideas spread. A drunk woman (her high heels clatter over the reply) stumbles to his table, asks him if he would like something spicy. In his walkman headphones the sound of hundreds of Cairenes on their feet applauding the star. The orchestra restarts, a man whistles, the crowd roars, a section of the crowd claps rhythmically, she begins to sing Beyid Annak. He wonders what she means by spicy. She is drugged. Opiated. It is a lot to think about. The smell of coffee, roasted nuts. Raised voices. The lit shop fronts. Laughter. Fragmented conversation. Women. The warmth. War. The smell of the sea. The hissing surf.
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