AnthologiesSundress Publications Anthology of Poetry by Sexual Assault Survivors: "Embalm" (reprint) - forthcoming

Selected PoemsSontag Mag: "thisbe on the walls"The Big Ship: "Leda and the Affair"Diode: "Embalm", "Star-spangled" & "Gentlest of Bleeding Things"Stanchion: "Origin Story" (print)Aôthen Magazine: "Penelope to Odysseus"

Selected Creative NonfictionPassengers Journal: "Sweet Haemorrhage"

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Early Praise for Night of the Fire

Night of the Fire jolts, thrashes, and writhes toward and away from violence, embodying a poetics of horror that is riven, also, with desire—a desire for mercy, for justice, for life . . . these haunting and haunted poems leave their startling, palpable dents on the heart.

—Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat

If you want poetry that lingers long after the last page is turned, this chapbook is for you. Fierce and deeply intimate, these poems unravel the threads of violence, longing and trauma with aching vulnerability and unflinching honesty . . . This is poetry that dares, and I am grateful to have read this beautiful work.

—Noor Hindi, author of Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow.

His poems are deft and unyielding in their examination of bodily and cultural trauma, prompting readers to consider and reconsider questions of individual and collective power, disaster, and complicity . . . Night of the Fire is unapologetic — Ali parses the alienation inherent to survivorship, sitting with and interrogating the agony of aftermath. Reading these poems feels like keeping my hand on a white-hot stove.

—Maria Gray, author of Universal Red

'Leda and the Affair' was first published in March 2025 in The Big Ship's Little Prayers section—a self-destructing art writing segment. It is reprinted below.

LEDA AND THE AFFAIR

I found him outside. A man much older than me,
jawline like the bones of a newborn fawn,
too soft one moment, too sharp the next.
His headlights turned their heads,
luminescent toes grazed over a rat
spilled from the city’s sewage.
Flies parted its fur and fed.
The wings, shameless and glutted,
beat praise into the meat.
I pretended his car was a white dove,
fluttering forth in the filth of the city.
Wind tore through my dark curls,
a thing that wanted me, for once.
If I were not awkward at the silence,
if loneliness didn’t gnaw like a stray,
if I hadn’t mistaken the wind’s movement
for freedom, it wouldn’t have been like this.
In the window’s voyeuristic glare, I looked
like someone else—some girl in a music video,
slow-motion, lips parted, Addison Rae
in Diet Pepsi, neck limp in the passenger seat,
pretty as roadkill. Though alive, I sat so still,
shining like a taxidermist’s prize, pretty
in a way that begged to be touched,
pretty in a way that meant nothing at all.
He took my wrist, placed it on himself,
as if I had reached for it, as if I had asked
to touch this small animal of heat.
Thought yes, maybe this is what feeling
wanted feels like. When the other invites
the warmth of you on theirs.
His apartment was cold and heavy.
He asked me to take my shirt off. I didn’t.
I sat so still, felt the air set over me
like resin, said no so quietly it felt like
I never spoke at all. Shame ebbed thick
in my throat, I had already seen myself
through so many eyes, already known the
ruin of my skin. His gaze moved over me
like fingers pressing for a wound.
And you know what?
Maybe I should lean into the image—
good girl, pornographic, offering a fantasy.
He wanted to film me on my knees.
Phone’s cold light refused to touch me,
except watch. I swallowed his shivers of ecstasy,
his pulse so warm in my throat, I couldn’t
tell it apart from mine. He never sent the video.
Kept it like a vein severed clean, a thing
that once pulsed for him. On the drive back,
cigarette burning low in his mouth,
gum wrenched dry between my teeth, he said
he had a wife. Asked if that bothered me.
I heard the wind answer in the absence of my
voice, saw the night aim its arrow at my mouth.
Across, light moved unwanted over a vulgar pigeon
masquerading as a dove on the pavements.
When the husband dropped me off, the taillights shrunk—
two red mouths swallowing a name he never learned.
Not a dove. Not something meant to rise.