February Augury
BY SARAH GHAZAL ALI
Yulan magnolias blossom first
as birds
little feathered fists
I admit to
imagining could harm me,
extending barefaced
from trees, the known
homes of jinn
I’m told. The night deepens and
locusts halo my head
or don’t. Believe me
I barely believe
the heralds I’ve seen, the mirror
windowed if I stare
a beat too long, my face refracting
others, foremothers,
my beloved’s hands rising
in supplication under winter
rain, stopping after spotting
the dead sparrow by the door
bent like a comma—
as if asking him
to pause, or telling me
to wait.
Parable of Flies
BY SARAH GHAZAL ALI
I heard them, wings beating
a din beyond the thistle, pilgrims
beckoned by the promise of carrion.
Lured by the lurid, I followed
their song off the path, turned my back
to the lake. Angels fled the quarry,
thirst a blight in their wake. The flies,
their mouths roved like dogs
the breast of a sundered wren,
chest wide as a lens, steady
spectator of its own death.
This is an economy
of asylum. Ruddy flesh calls
come and brutes abound,
haloing their open-handed new home.
I’m divining my body a dirtied domestic.
When it rains, devotion is the womb
I’ve hollowed to keep desire dry.
