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    Deluge
    Deluge
    Deluge
    Ebook117 pages56 minutes

    Deluge

    By Leila Chatti

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    About this ebook

    “To write a series of poems out of extreme illness is a bracing accomplishment indeed. In Deluge… Leila Chatti, born of a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, brilliantly explores the trauma." —Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times

    In her early twenties, Leila Chatti started bleeding and did not stop. Physicians referred to this bleeding as flooding. In the Qur’an, as in the Bible, the Flood was sent as punishment. The idea of disease as punishment drives this collection’s themes of shame, illness, grief, and gender, transmuting religious narratives through the lens of a young Arab-American woman suffering a taboo female affliction. Deluge investigates the childhood roots of faith and desire alongside their present day enactments. Chatti’s remarkably direct voice makes use of innovative poetic form to gaze unflinchingly at what she was taught to keep hidden. This powerful piece of life-writing depicts Chatti’s journey from diagnosis to surgery and remission in meticulous chronology that binds body to spirit and advocates for the salvation of both. Chatti blends personal narrative, religious imagery, and medical terminology in a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateApr 21, 2020
    ISBN9781619322202
    Deluge

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      Book preview

      Deluge - Leila Chatti

      Deluge

      LEILA CHATTI

      Note to the Reader

      Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:

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      Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.

      When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.

      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

      This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

      for Patricia

      Poems in this book have been published in the following journals:

      The American Poetry Review—Haemorrhoissa, Tumor

      Beloit Poetry Journal—Intake Form

      Boulevard—Annunciation (My body now a chamber)

      CALYX Journal—Mary in the Waiting Room at the Gynecologist’s Office

      The Cincinnati Review—God’s Will

      fields—Postdiluvian, The Scare

      Four Way Review—MRI

      The Georgia Review—Annunciation (I have come to accept the story), Questions Directed toward the Idea of Mary

      Gulf Coast—The Blood, Night Ghazal

      Indiana Review—Immaculate or Otherwise

      The Journal—Etiology, Odalisque

      Kenyon Review Online—Angel

      The Los Angeles Review—Nulligravida Nocturne, Watershed

      Los Angeles Review of Books—Haemorrhoissa’s Menarche, Mary Speaks

      The Massachusetts Review—Still Life with Hemorrhage

      Mid-American Review—Deluge (And so it was)

      Narrative—Exegesis, Landscape with Bleeding Woman, Sainte-Baume

      New England Review—Portrait of the Illness as Nightmare

      Ninth Letter—Prayer

      Pleiades—Litany While Reading Scripture in the Gynecologic Oncology Waiting Room

      Ploughshares—Confession

      Poetry Northwest—Metrorrhagia

      Prairie Schooner—Eyes Opened, as Gods

      Rattle—14, Sunday School, 3 Days Late, Morning

      The Rumpus—Annunciation (at the bedside)

      Smartish Pace—The Handsome Young Doctor, Who Is Very Concerned

      32 Poems—Morcellation, Waking after the Surgery

      Tin House—Sarcoma

      Tin House Online—Testimony

      Virginia Quarterly Review—Menorrhagia, Mother, Mubtadiyah, Storm

      West Branch—Annunciation (All night I leak a shadow)

      Willow Springs—Myomectomy

      14, Sunday School, 3 Days Late also appeared in the anthology Annunciation (Phoenicia Publishing, 2015); Immaculate or Otherwise and Morcellation were included in the Orison Anthology for 2017 and 2019, respectively; Confession appeared in the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019).

      Contents

      Title Page

      Note to Reader

      Confession

      Mubtadiyah

      Intake Form

      Deluge

      Mary in the Waiting Room at the Gynecologist’s Office

      MRI

      Annunciation

      Mary Speaks

      Watershed

      Sarcoma

      Litany While Reading Scripture in the Gynecologic Oncology Waiting Room

      Menorrhagia

      Mother

      Tumor

      Portrait of the Illness as Nightmare

      Angel

      Haemorrhoissa’s Menarche

      Etiology

      Eyes Opened, as Gods

      14, Sunday School, 3 Days Late

      The Scare

      Night Ghazal

      Hymen

      The Blood

      Metrorrhagia

      Still Life with Hemorrhage

      Haemorrhoissa

      Immaculate or Otherwise

      God’s Will

      Testimony

      Prayer

      Zina

      Nulligravida Nocturne

      Morning

      Annunciation

      The Handsome Young Doctor, Who Is Very Concerned

      Morcellation

      Landscape with Bleeding Woman

      Odalisque (Polaroid Taken One Day before the Surgery)

      Annunciation

      Myomectomy

      Waking after the Surgery

      Postdiluvian

      Remission

      And It Was Said

      Annunciation

      Storm

      Exegesis

      Questions Directed toward the Idea of Mary

      Awrah

      Sainte-Baume

      Deluge

      Notes

      About the Author

      Also by Leila Chatti

      Acknowledgments

      Copyright

      Special thanks

      From the depths I have cried out to you, O Lord

      DELUGE

      CONFESSION

      Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.

      Mary giving birth, the Holy Qur’an

      Truth be told, I like Mary a little better

      when I imagine her like this, crouched

      and cursing, a boy-God pushing on

      her cervix (I like remembering

      she had a cervix, her body ordinary

      and so like mine), girl-sweat lacing

      rivulets like veins in the sand,

      her

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