Leila Chatti

WHAT I WAS, THEN

Not in the night, but the night.

Violet shadow which at once touched everything
and nothing, could not
touch, was closer than.

Not the pond, not the grasses,
but the disturbance
alerting the eye.

Not the trees, but the vacancy defining the trees.

Not the bird, but the sound of the bird
which supersedes it.

LEILA CHATTI is a Tunisian-American poet and the author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Cleveland State University University Poetry Center, and the NEA. She is the Mendota Lecturer in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.