2023 Roots & Roads Winner: “ANCESTRY TOLD THROUGH PROPHECY” by Meriem Evangeline

through the farmland where the cattle

umber the wheat, I felt the prophecy pour

from my mouth. My tenderness as predatory

as a butcher through the eyes of a lamb that

begets the new land. Let me tell you the story I

know, let me weave together a language spat

from the clefts of our prophets to tell you that

that day, the unfurled wool of the lamb became

the aparche and the rupture began. the

crops and pomegranates fell from the lamb-

stomach. daughter after daughter was

offered for the harvest. together one body—

sewed daughter-flesh more fresh than the

unsutured underbelly of an ewe whose

organs lay out fully uneaten. that day the

butchers also left no daughter-organ uneaten

they consumed each offal because to refuse the

onslaught would prove they lacked mercy for what

suffers. when they ate they became conquerors and

bred the berber daughters to plough the new seed.

a seed well fathered, honourable and always pure.

I am the new seed, I am that daughter.

٢.

cross    my tendency to confuse you for the prophets I pray to

now removed from fluency    my

the root word for عرب comes from     dweller of the

desert       my grandmother says that we were all once