Matrilineage [Umbilicus]
the first inheritance a puncture wound:
where you detach from your mother
an undug grave call it provenance
in one language named life source ڂواء
eve. the period preceding some say wife/mother of [ ]
but origin can’t be tethered to consequence
an oculus doomed to gape before a mirror
my abdomen rounded a line appeared
from navel to sex linea nigra
text appeared ا the first letter
abjad inferred, ا
mammalian I, matriline
I did not want this look how
it appeared I multiplied
from fragment I bore
witness: your body
Feature Date
- January 22, 2024
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
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“Matrilineage [Umbilicus]” from THEOPHANIES: by Sarah Ghazal Ali.
Published by Alice James Books on January 16, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Ghazal Ali.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Beowulf Sheehan
Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), selected as the Editors’ Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A Djanikian Scholar and winner of The Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, her poems appear in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, Guernica, and elsewhere. A former Stadler Fellow, Sarah has received fellowships and residencies from Tin House, the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, the Hambidge Center, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Community of Writers, and others. She is the poetry editor for West Branch and lives in the Bay Area, California.
New Gloucester, Maine
University of Maine
“In this expansive debut collection, Ali draws from the Quran and the Bible as vehicles for a deeper consideration of the intersections of family, gender, and faith. … These powerful, resonant poems herald an exciting new voice.”
— Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"Ali's is one of the most sure-footed debuts I've had the pleasure to encounter in many years. Wrought with precision, control, and an astute humility before the wondrous, the profound and profane, these poems feel crafted from the sum total of history, then realized at the crest of the poet's matrix of experiences. A truly fearless and tender gem of a collection."
— Ocean Vuong
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