The Prompt
How can I write to the animal
when I am not the one
being pulled out legs first.
The men from the village
converge upon the mound.
Something stirs. A mother
holds a doll. But what of
the thinking brain, an intact
head, or whether what emerges
will resemble some mammalian’s
form, fur, skin, teeth, hair, a thing
that had its limits pushed too far.
Saba Husain
Saba Husain is the author of the poetry collection, Elegy for My Tongue (Terrapin Books 2023). Her work appears in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Hot Poets Equinox, On the Seawall, Puerto del Sol, Sequestrum, Synkroniciti, The Shore, Texas Review, Third Coast, and Verse Daily. She is also published in Poetry in English from Pakistan: a 21st Century Anthology, Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol VIII: TX, and What the House Knows (Terrapin Books 2025). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2023 Perugia Press Poetry finalist, and serves on the board of Mutabilis Press.
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