Fable with Cyst, Celestial Being & Sacrifice

In my middle, small submarine, pigeon pea 

               housing hormones. A star was born beside it, 

grew, then blued & popped. An angel appeared 

               before me, said, God will send a flood. Set 

my bush to burning, there I saw the future 

               blood. Marched animals onto my ark, two by two, 

they knew me by the amber stripe in my eye. 

               The wolf in me paced the deck, the serpent 

slept & bobbed for apples, the doves & ravens 

               circled, the birds of prey prayed, but, worried, 

none would land. Their sounds a frenzied 

               symphony, so loud the panther felt compelled 

to know the path & so stretched a long 

               periscope toward the multiplying horizons, 

saw the new earth & instinctively knew, 

               to make it through the density, the beasts would 

have to give up something: maybe memory, 

               surely hunger. And so, like any good God 

-mother, I laid back, unzipped myself 

               from lip to heel, I let them feast.

Copyright © 2024 by Alafia Nicole Sessions. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 22, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“Beginning in the body with a ruptured ovarian cyst and subsequent midcycle flooding, [also known as] heavy bleeding, this poem quickly crossed over into the world of fable. What if I processed this normal but wildly unsettling physiological event through the lens of a fable, beginning with the biblical flood, centering a female body, mind and spirit as the site of rebirth for the new world. Unexpected flooding, both menstrual and ecological, is a sign of these systems’ existential threat. As always, motherhood, its anxieties and inherent sacrifices, play a significant role in this eco-drama rooted in the reproductive body.”
—Alafia Nicole Sessions