Deluge

By Leila Chatti

“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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Release date: Apr 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781619322202

Book preview

Deluge

LEILA CHATTI

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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