Shagufta Mulla

I Am That I Am (Exodus 3:14)

When I return to the quiet wholeness

that I am without thoughts, I’m holding

a gila woodpecker feather—

black, white, black bars—dropped just outside

my driver side door at the hotel.

I don’t live here anymore. Phoenix,

I used to say I hate you—your paternal heat—

but I was already inflamed with an unfinished past,

unfinished pain that birthed incessant

thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.

When I return to my little desert treasure—

daughter made of stardust—

small enough to fit in a cupped palm,

big enough to evoke God(-size awe),

     I Am

watching a woman hold a feather—

her little-girl-heart looking up—

watching her search the many mesquite trees,

but there are no birds around—

just a million little leaves

that let (almost all) the light shine through.

Shagufta Mulla is the art editor of Peatsmoke Journal, a veterinarian, and a copy editor for online publications. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Five Points, Wild Roof Journal, Okay Donkey, Stoneboat Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She won second place in poetry for the 2025 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards, and in 2021 she won Blood Orange Review’s poetry prize. A former Arizonan, Shagufta now lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Instagram.