Steve Babb

For Leqaa Kordia

She’s gone so long without a glimmer of the sun
Or sliver of the moon or morsel of halal cuisine
Without a face that doesn’t scowl
Or voice that doesn’t drawl contempt
That she cannot recall a time
When her whole world was not haram

She’s grown so used to shackles that
Her ankles are accustomed to their gravity
She has become inured to the fluorescent lights’ relentless glare
And she sloughs off the frigid blasts of air-conditioned air

She almost has become accustomed to
The blur of days which haze to shallow sleep
And to the roiling dreams which only plunge her back
Into the waking nightmare which now passes for her life

The seconds and the seasons multiply
But she stays mired in eternal now
And zeroed out at midnight’s stroke
And it’s always midwinter in the cockles of her heart

The iron bars and the barbed wire snarls become her furniture
Her jailers’ taunts and curt commands become her parlour talk
And bit by bit this Prairieland dystopia
Comes to impersonate an obscene travesty of home

She half-persuades herself this is the only world
She’ll ever know or ever has deserved
And that she truly is entirely alone
And utterly forgotten here
Immured within this misbegotten catacomb

It’s only natural that she should feel that way
For, after all, she’s just one woman, gaunt and frail
Arrayed against the whole force of a lawless state
Which is hellbent on crushing her
Beneath its suffocating weight

But then she starts awake
And steels her fortitude
And she resolves

That she won’t let
Her jailers grind her down
Into decrepitude
And break her like a mule
Inside this godforsaken rank corral
Called Prairieland

Where nobody but the pariah prairie dogs
And mourning doves and the untethered tumbleweeds
Break the monotony
Of the dismal hellscape
That she’s been relegated to
And that’s swallowed her whole
And unrelentingly refuses to
Regurgitate

Steve Babb is a retired public health worker who has fought for social justice for his entire adult life. He volunteers with El Refugio, a hospitality house for relatives visiting detainees at Stewart Immigrant Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia (elrefugiostewart.org). His poems address a variety of social justice struggles, including immigrant detention and solidarity with Central America and Gaza, and he has been inspired by the poetry of witness of Anna Akhmatova, Mahmoud Darwish, Refaat Alareer, Hiba Abu Nada, Mosab Abu Toha, Fadi Joudah, Roque Dalton, Carolyn Forché, Wilfred Owen, Nour Elassy, and Hanan Azaiza. His work has appeared in Wayfarer Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, IMMPRINT, and Mothering Magazine.

This poem appears in Uprooted: Poems of Resistance, Witness, and Survival (The Chaos Section Poetry Project, Fall 2026). We’re sharing each poem from the collection individually over the coming weeks. You can read the full book or download the free PDF here.