Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back poet Saba Husain of Houston, Texas. We featured her evocative poetry in our first issue, and in “Audacity” she brings us three new poems meditating on the courage required to live, to survive and to break free of that which does not serve us.
“Washing Out the Mouth,” one of our “Audacity” poetry contest finalists, is a searing examination of trauma’s afterlife, especially the psychological scars left by abusive relationships.
“To undo hurt, you must get comfortable with hate. You must/ not bat an eyelid when swatting a wasp on the windowpane,/ or flinch while tossing out an eggplant or a bouquet of roses,/ because being soft could trigger what you worked hard to forget.”
The poem’s audacity lies in its refusal to sanitize the darker emotions that accompany healing. Saba insists that anger and hate—so often dismissed, especially in women—can be necessary tools of liberation. If we want to break with someone who hurts us, we must, intentionally accept that they are a foe. If not, we risk being drawn back into abusive situations by gifts or passing sweetness. Saba’s imagery oscillates between the savage and the delicate and her subtle use of repetition creates a rhythmic persistence that grabs our attention and will not let go.
In “Volcanic Explosivity Index: Benchmark” Saba deals with the inane and damaging things people ask women who have been through divorce. The poem is an engaging variation on call-and-response, prickling with heat as she addresses society.
“Did you ever feel not heard, like you were nothing but a body?/ If I ever look back (which I seldom do) I see a stranger moving through her day, I do not recognize her. Now, I can speak and move the way I want. I can shout and let every expletive I know spill from my mouth. Why would you even ask such a question?”
After giving us some apt, earthy imagery designed to build our empathy, she arrives at the conclusion that she doesn’t need to explain herself.
Finally, “A Tale of Alstonia” is a whimsical poem that likens the generational relationships of her family to a grove of alstonia trees. It begins with a wonderfully innocent episode from Saba’s youth. Someone once told her that a tree would grow out of her body if she swallowed fruit seeds. This well-meaning advice did not have the desired effect.
“For weeks I waited for a twig or leaf to emerge./ I swallowed whole, every seed I found. Once, I swallowed an assortment/ and gulped enough water to irrigate a grove, then stood in tree pose/ under the dappled shade of an oak.”
The counterpoint of the fantastic with the mundane is the engine of the poem.
Taken together, these three poems assert that the individuation of women and children is not only valid but fierce and beautiful—an act of self‑definition that stands in sharp contrast to a society eager to diminish or dismiss them. In Saba’s hands, being who you are becomes an audacious act, a reclamation of voice and presence.
Read Saba’s marvelous and deeply moving poetry in in Synkroniciti’s “Audacity” issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Saba Husain is a Pakistani American poet. Her book of poetry is Elegy for My Tongue (Terrapin Books 2023). Her poems appear in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, La Piccioletta Barca, On the Seawall, Puerto del Sol, Sequestrum, Synkroniciti, The Shore, Texas Review, Third Coast, and Verse Daily, as well as Poetry in English from Pakistan: a 21st Century Anthology, Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol VIII: TX, and What the House Knows.
Saba is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2023 Perugia Press Prize finalist and a 2021 and 2020 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize finalist. She was the winner of the 2022 Spring Equinox Hot Poet Poetry Contest. She serves on the board of Mutabilis Press and holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from University of Houston. To read more of her work please visit https://sabahusain.com and follow her on Facebook.