Sara Saab

Love Poem for the Way Objects Breathe in Summer

Let the body be breached & loose the tremble
let everything of hide sweat long and suckered as a tongue riding
along the ridges of some cold set sugar, and
let also the heart unfurl, a yo-yo your exacting hand
wound too tight /now abound/ and let

the best and worst of us linger a moment
as if we were moths and laughter a porch light
My friends, there is nothing we were sent to do
here, nothing we’ve been called for, and time
is a wet dog dripping a line of slobber

to slug in the dust, an animal we’ve tried to outpace, but let us not
outpace it. Let us wait. Let us hear in concert our litany
of exhaustions. The sun insists even at vast galactic distance:
let our skin set free its motes and pleats and vapors
and drink, and set a dish of water down

Sara Saab was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She now lives in North London, where she has perfected her resting London face. Her current interests are croissants and emojis thereof, amassing poetry collections, and coming up with a plausible reason to live on a sleeper train. Sara’s a 2015 graduate of the Clarion Writers' Workshop. Her poetry has recently appeared in Wasafiri and is upcoming in Glass Poetry. In 2018 she was a finalist for the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Prize. You can find her on Twitter as @fortnightlysara and at fortnightlysara.com.