Sarah Ghazal Ali

ANNUNCIATION

My pillaged body
not as interesting
as my virginal sister’s,
I know. Your books
efface me, dismiss me
as naturally lacking.
So my hair has long
since greyed, cropped
short, held back
under a matronly veil.
So I sent my husband to bed
another woman—I’m more noble
for it. I allowed a slight
to get the ball rolling.
I gambled my marriage
for a covenant.
By moonlight I grieved
the perpetual
blood marbling red
& black down my thighs.
They visited me first,
you know. God
& two angels came
with glad tidings,
announced I would flower
with a boy. But
all you remember
is what came next—
I hung my head & laughed.
When God at last
conferred my body
with fruit, the angels
raised their yellow wings.
They broke bread.
I listened until I heard
a great humming.
A child, a ripe boy
I would mother. The hive
coming to me
after all I’d done—
what else inside
to offer at the moment
of absolution but a flash
of sound? I knew
I wasn’t favored
but damned. My whole
long life I’d been groomed
to unfurl for the coming
of bees. I knew
when I passed he
would go back to her
& you to your Mater Dei,
your lily among thorns.
After all this, knowing
I’d be written
over, a vessel forgettable
but for a moment of sonic
lapse, tell me—
what would you have done?

---

NUDE

that first August, blood dotted linoleum
an apple bared its wayward stench

then what use of my feckless mouth?
God simmered below the limen of sight

I lived briefly unwitnessed
touched only by evening shadows

my silhouette caressing the door

---

Sarah Ghazal Ali is a Bay Area poet and Editor-in-Chief of Palette Poetry. She obtained her MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was a Juniper Fellow and MFA Fellow. Her poems appear in or are forthcoming from Pleiades, Narrative, Waxwing, Tinderbox, and others. Find her here and on Twitter @caesarah_.