Three Poems by Leila Chatti

RAMADAN LAMENT

“There is courtship, and there is hunger.”
.               —MARY SZYBIST

I want to eat my grief and my god
will not allow it. A lesson
in suffering—O!
but Lord—I have suffered.

I confess, I am
selfish, self-
absorbed—I consume

so I might rid myself
of what

I want through its destruction.

Before me as barrier, the ocean
swallowing, no
regard for consequence—in my grief
let me be simple like that.

My mouth, without
the other’s: useless.
I long to fill it like a grave.

O Lord,
don’t speak
to me

of restraint—I have abstained

so devoutly
in your name I am

defined by that absence, so long
I am wasting away.

_

WATERSHED

The moment was, to the observer (my boyfriend,
and God I suppose, as He is always
watching and we were
otherwise alone), ordinary—February waiting for us outside
settled as a marriage, all dull
secular light and tepid weather, inside the room
a pale green, muted and slightly cool as if under the surface
of a pond, I emerged
from the bathroom still shedding
blood like water, still leaking like a tap, I had changed
into a paper gown, baby-blue, with little bows
knotted along my spine, my body spiraled
back, ungainly, distracted, to hold
closed where I was exposed—he said
the nurse left something for me
on the exam table, a couple of white sheets
at the edge, I sank
onto blue plush, the stirrups
gaping to my left and right like two silver mouths,
and then those words, you know, I lifted them
so casually—

_

NULLIGRAVIDA NOCTURNE

And they ask you about menstruation. Say, “It is harm, so keep away from
wives during menstruation. And do not approach them until they are pure.”
.                —THE HOLY QUR’AN, 2:222

He touches me.
Reaches across our mattress

on the floor like a raft, adrift in night’s black
gulf. Headlights glide over the opposite wall.

Gilded. Quick. His hands
cresting the waves of my hips.

In the dark, I leak
more darkness. Inside,

an endless well. I know
now, deep within myself, myself

as harmed. Know deeper
the man I love

will never harm me. He’s no god
but good

to me. Like blood, the night
comes and comes and

comes. I was taught
for years a touch like this

was fruitless, a sin
to love when love couldn’t

root as proof. His
hands on my hips despite,

moored. If asked,
I’d make the trade—give up the inconceivable

heaven for a warmth
I can sense, the faithless

man who draws me toward him
through shadow, knowing

who I am, what I can’t be.

Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of the chapbooks Ebb and Tunsiya/Amrikiya. A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, her poems appear in Ploughshares, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.