Another Poem from Akhenaten by Dorothy Porter

AKHET-ATEN
REGNAL YEARS 12-17

She Leaves Her Things

What sort of face
is she wearing
at the Northern Palace?

She’s left behind
all her cosmetics.
Even her tweezers.
Will my love be sprouting
thick eyebrows?

Grow hideous, Nefertiti,
tumble in public
your hairy grief
like a performing dwarf.

Even Hapu. The monkey pot.
Left him behind too.
I see the mark
of your fingernail
in his kohl.

I stole him
from my mother’s chest,
we were still kids
but your new breasts
nudged me to it.

I’d like one like that,
you said
so I pinched him.
Hapu
we called him
after the smart little monkey
who built temples
for my father.

I’m not touching your things.

Not looking at myself
in your mirror.

The sluts in my harem
can have the lot.