Poetry |

“The Kite” & “The Unlikeliness of Empty Spaces”

The Kite

 

 

My grandson found a kite in the back of a closet.

 

On the first day of spring,

a cold front

whipped the wind through boughs

and scattered the contents

of overflowing recycling bins.

 

This is what it means to be in the now;

release a kite to the wind,

feel the tug of a string,

his small face turns up,

all fascination to the sky.

 

What is happiness, what is the now?

Two spaces

later, we’re already (the) past.

We are, and we are, and then we are

a murky were. We were

unable to resurrect

                                 bits caught in the tree line.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *     

 

 

The Unlikeliness of Empty Spaces

 

 

The body cannot

sift

memory

into sachets.

 

One morning I woke to a dove

cooing in the tree outside my window.

 

One morning I touched

my forehead

to the ground.

 

How old, the desire

to be held

like a desert

flower on the side of

a knotted stem.

 

Yesterday, I was

a crowd.

This morning, I woke

to the applause

of a bed.

 

The desire to be

held, long

after the last drop

has left the flesh.

 

Water runs where it can.

Contributor
Saba Z. Husain

Saba Z. Husain is a Pakistani-American poet from Houston. Her work appears in Cimarron Review, Barrow Street, Sequestrum, The Aleph Review, Bangalore Review, Bellevue Review, Texas Review, Dallas Review, Natural Bridge, Glass Poetry, Jaggery, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and Third Coast. She holds a day job and serves on the board of Mutabilis Press.

Posted in Poetry

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