Flood God Virgin: Testimony
by Sara Elkamel

In the musician’s hands even my back
              had the feel of velvet. Hair grounded 

beneath the skin. I was convinced the eyes of god
             were drawn like blinds in the night, 

so I undressed. When dark would spread itself
             like a mirror over the river, I’d dip my feet 

in black glass as he sang. I was trying to learn
             but my voice was potholed and faint. 

To practice, I started singing to the fish after he left.
             I grew so attached I started rescuing them 

from the fishermen’s nets; replaced them with eye-shaped
            stones. Men started selling them along the banks,

and that’s how stone became staple in our country.
            I lied to the musician about the morning hours,

said I always left right after he did. One morning
           my mother let the sun come screaming in, shook me

like a child and said virgin--the flood god
           has asked for you. She rubbed my skin

with a coarse black stone until water rolled
            over my bones like a finger. You will be

spotless for your husband. She lifted
             each hair from its roots with rose water

and sugar. That morning the music of harps
              and hunger came from hundreds

of lion men. They held spears the size of palm trees,
              their bellies bare, their faces salted

with pride. Women painted my face with butter
              and red pigment and fastened god’s lotus to my hair.

Wrapped ropes around my waist. Can you
             imagine? For hours I stood silent at the island’s edge

as the salted men sang. O god, O flood, feed us
              with your eyes! I might have heard the musician

chanting too, but in daylight our truths are tenuous
             and the potholed heart suspects even her mother.

I tried to say you have the wrong girl. You have the wrong go--
              Who are you to say what’s right for this country?

They called me an infidel, and used the word love.
              One more word we’ll bury you in the sand.
​
They hemmed my white dress with black stones the shape
             of god’s eyes. This is the system; 

you cannot change it. When the harps grew silent
             I cracked the river and fell. A whole wedding

was watching me. My only question, falling, was what god
            would flood the land with

when he saw inside my body
            a girl, singing badly to the fish—what livid silt, 

what song?

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Sara Elkamel is a poet and journalist living between her hometown, Cairo, and New York City. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University, and is an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University. Elkamel's poems have appeared in The Common, Michigan Quarterly Review, Four Way Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Yale Review, Narrative Magazine, and as part of the anthologies Best New Poets and Best of the Net, among other publications. She is the author of the chapbook “Field of No Justice” (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021). ​