The Resettlement
We picked zinnias the day before leaving,
and armfuls of marigolds
from a farm refugees had sown.
Late September warmed
the beans on the poles, and somewhere
between the kale’s neat rows
and tomorrow, childhood
homes were left behind. We worked fast under the sun,
learned where to nip the blooms,
arranged petals in blue glass jars,
threaded needles through fleshy stems
for garlands.
We clung to a music of our own,
traced henna on our palms,
basked in bouquets.
No one said goodbye.
A Nearly Dried-Up Woman
After Alice Oswald
It’s a likeness of gray rain,
distant sounds of singing,
a clicking of dry grass,
of chaffed grain, scattered
fields, children running.
A speechless, broken old woman
shows her hazel-eyed girl the okra that grows
on the stalk. An unintelligible monotone,
a throat clearing rustle, distant, dry grass. […]
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The Tree by the Garden Gate
A dried pomegranate
rolled out from the trunk as I reached
for a bag of groceries.
I thought I’d removed it with the others,
gifts of a woman who could only give.
Plucked a few days before she died last summer,
it was hollow now and rattled when I shook it.
I placed the red fruit on the ledge of the fence
to admire its imperfect form, faded colors,
but it reminded me of a cheek sunken into bone. […]
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Saba Z Husain has published poetry in Cimarron Review, Barrow Street, Sequestrum, Bellevue Review, Bangalore Review, Texas Review, Reunion: Dallas Review, Natural Bridge, Glass Poetry, Jaggery, Synkroniciti, Equinox, Missing Slate, Houston Chronicle, Southern Poetry Review, Vol. VIII: Texas, Kill Line: Anklebiters Press, Enchantment of the Ordinary: Mutabilis Press, Odes and Elegies of the Texas Gulf Coast: Lamar University Press and elsewhere. Her manuscript was a finalist for the 2021 and 2020 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and semifinalist for the 2020 Philip Levine Poetry Prize. She was the recipient of the 2014 Lorene Pouncey Award at Houston Poetry Fest. Saba currently serves as a board member of Houston’s Mutabilis Press. She studied Creative Writing at University of Houston.
“The Resettlement,” “A Nearly Dried Up Woman,” and “The Tree at the Garden Gate” appeared in The Dallas Review, Barrow Street, and Cimarron Review, respectively.