Harami Ghazal
Rukan Saif
My god tells me not to bare my sins,
but the last time I prayed
was in a past life. I am still trying to find my way
there. Picture me tightly scarved. Picture me a prayer,
the Arabic slipping under my tongue, lingual frenulum thick
with sea salt. Each plosive a wave cresting over. What is praying
if not the ocean receding from the shoreline,
only to return? And what is guilt if not a prayer
on fire? My god tells me he is closer to me
than my jugular vein, so, regrettably, I pray
for distance. For a colder moon.
Regret, too, is a kind of prayer.
Last night I dreamt myself
into a seabird. In my beak, I held my prey
& heard the sound of a vein bursting.
AUDIO
Listen to Rukan Saif read “Harami Ghazal.”
About this poem: Some of the most fun advice I received on form was to break into it. I find it really satisfying when a ghazal turns into/against itself and breaks its own rules while clearly still being a ghazal. When I was writing this poem, I was thinking a lot about faith, fracture, and return. I felt that the ghazal form allowed me to honor return with its repetition and circularity, while the refrain of “pray/prey” allowed me to study the connection between faith and fracture.
This poem was selected as the runner-up of the Sita Martin Prize for Shō No. 8.
Read about the Sita Martin Prize for emerging poets here, or view past recipients and honorees.
Rukan Saif is a poet and essayist from Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Faultline, The Penn Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. A Best of the Net nominee, she reads for ONLY POEMS and has received generous support from Brooklyn Poets and The Seventh Wave. She now splits her time between Baltimore and Boston.
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