The lore goes
that Hawa dared Adam
to eat of the fruit
because Shaitan told her
Adam was unfaithful. Skeptical,
Hawa demanded evidence
and Shaitan said, Look! Look!
into the abundant river
and look she did,
and while some say
the first displacement
was from the Garden
it was actually this:
a woman looked
into water, into shimmering
light, into a wet
mirror, and mistook her face
for the face of a stranger.
Edil Hassan is a Somali-American poet. A finalist for the 2022 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in POETRY, Academy of American Poets, and is anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3 Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019). She has received support from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Stadler Center for Poetry. Hassan is the author of Dugsi Girl (Akashic Press, 2021) which was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation African Poets series by the African Poetry Book Fund. A graduate of the WashU MFA program, she is currently revising her debut poetry collection.
