Three Poems by Hafizah Geter

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HOW TO SAW A MAN IN ½, PT. 1

Open and ripe from triple bypass, 
my father will not look me in the eye, 

stares instead at the bed's 
empty distance, continues his widower's talk.

Fascinated by the differences
in our grief, I yank gauze out of him, a magician

pulling scarves, until there’s nothing 
but a deep beveled groove gaping from his chest. 

Flooded with saline, my father grimaces 
from this intimacy. Fingers trace borders 

of incision, searching him for infection, 
trap doors. His pulse, threaded and worn, attempts to proffer a deal

between us, asking if I will be a good daughter 
and let him die. With my hands in my father's

chest I am lonelier than I’ve ever been. 

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EVE

All these years

She’s been gone

Allah still picks 

Her bones clean

His mouth still drips 

With her marrow

How un-American

On my knees

I touch my head 

East I say

Allāhu Akbar 

The moon appears

As though appearing

Were a simple thing

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HOW TO SAW A MAN IN ½, PT. 2

Years later, I learn to make things 

disappear, an illusion mastered quickly, 
his ass cheeks bare and bleeding. Desperate 

for cover, my father finds none. Only his daughter    
sopping his blood up in fistfuls. Sticky and browned, my father leaks 

like run-off from a stitched hip, vanishes into gauze— 
my hands. He trembles, my knees go white. 

My father, the sawed man,
eyes expectant, panicked, seek out 

an imaginary audience to believe
in this trick, its promises to make him whole.

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