Zoé Mahfouz

JELLYFISH MEETS MARBLE

Jellyfish drifting
Ship lacks sufficient ballast
Rocky waves ahead.

Below the tide line
Marbles scattered on the shore
Holy grail treasure.

No brain, bones, or heart
Eight tentacles still ready
Marbles, clear the deck.

Stinging to survive
Worst enemy, sea turtles
Pipe down, foul berth risk.

Thrift store bargaining
Marble swapped for zooplankton
Jellyfish tycoon.

Fishermen set nets
Oligosaccharide source
Jellyfish noodles.

A FOGGY PLACE : DAY ONE

Empty misty town
Restaurant from The Menu
Sacrificed lobster.

Low tide mystery
Wiggly piles of sand emerge
Lugworms feed the French.

Chlorine spa bubbles
Leaking ceiling agony
Catching shower creep.

Moss covering roads
Dog bursting out of nowhere
Playing with a leaf.

Food plant smoking up
Besieged by hungry seagulls
Feeding leads to fines.

Zoé Mahfouz is a multi-talented French artist: an award-winning bilingual Actress trained at the Actors Studio, a Screenwriter with a Master’s degree from the London Film School, a Content Creator with over 3 million views online, and a Writer whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her writing has appeared in over 60 literary magazines and best-of anthologies worldwide. While her fiction is often described as “very tongue-in-cheek,” “kookie,” and “random,” her poetry, which ranges from seventeenth-century eerie Japanese haiku and haibun to more classical forms and the occasional ekphrastic poem, draws on anthropological strangeness and sharp mythological references. In contrast, her other poetic and prose works lean into a darker, more introspective register. They weave fragmented narrative with sensory overload and philosophical undercurrent, exploring themes like psychiatric care, neurodivergence, and the collapse of identity.