Sakina Hassan
The poem was submitted as part of Mina Malik's digital curation on the theme of Summer and the Senses. Mina was unable to include it during her curation in June due to space constraints, and thus we are publishing it now.
It’s Summer again
Season of the droning, deafening coolers
Watering them another chore
In the broiling, scorching day
Once, a long time ago
In my summer holiday impatience
I let the pipe slip from my fingers
Slithering through the window bars
I let water swirl and pool
All over my grandmother’s bed
Setting off her siren screaming
For the fiftieth time that day
One time too many for her daughter-in-law
The final nail, her skull exploding
Her nerves, already baked to fragility
Snapping in every direction
She put her foot down
Through several miles of earth
She left, trailing anger like choking smoke
The pieces of our broken home scattering in her wake
It’s Summer again
Season of Nana’s air conditioning
And our fathers wilting in cold, dark rooms
Heads limp in their hands
Begging our mothers to come back.
Sakina Hassan abandoned academia after an M.Phil in microelectronic engineering to work in the development sector. She has put her current job as a librarian on hold for new motherhood and writes in her spare time. Her work has been featured in Gully Collective and the Author’s Alliance Flash Fiction Festival 2021.
Minaa Mohsin is a Pakistani-American painter. She received her BFA in painting from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2013 and MFA in painting and drawing from the Pratt Institute, New York in 2016. Her work has been exhibited in Pakistan and the United States. In 2018 she was awarded a residency at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, NY. She is a certified Golden Artist Educator for Golden Artist Colors in Pakistan since 2019. Minaa currently divides her time between Lahore and Brooklyn and is the co-founder of Partner Painters in Lahore. Her work was also featured in The Aleph Review, Vol. 6 (2022).