Stacy Gnall

TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself…
—Anne Sexton

I was wrapped in black
fur and I was

wrapped in white
fur and the moon

was rising like slow
bad laughter.

I was drenched
in gown

light and I
was drenched

in bone light
as my window’s moon

waged its danger
in anger

that it had not been
the prettier sister.

The moon was
wrapped in ashes

and the moon was
drenched in silvers

and it followed me
a committed but

manipulative lover
whetting its pebble

tongue as it turned
my face foreign

from mother
in the mirror

where my eyes
turned antiquated

moons, full black
doubloons, and I

could no longer
pronounce

what I was
after.

It seemed
from every where

every thing beautiful
looked on

at the blank page panic
of my new skin

my new hunger’s
black arrow

blipping—telling me
where to begin.

My giving way
giving out giving in.

Take your last
tremble, I said

you will be yourself
by morning

thinking I’d wake
naked and radiant

in a field the next day
not knowing what

I’d done or where
I’d been in the night.

Rising to shake
the fine lines

of dust from my hide.
Rising to run

until it’s dust
and the dust recedes

like the details of some
damn dogged dream.

STACY GNALL is the author of the poetry collections Heart First into the Forest (Alice James, 2011) and Dogged (University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has an MFA from the University of Alabama and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from USC. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she lives and teaches in Nevada.