Sara Al-Bahar
Our Father the Prophet
my older sisters grew up believing/our father was a prophet/couldn’t tell him they knew/baba might have to go away/hushed girl voices under the covers/discussions of evidence/red flickering light/cracks in the bedroom door/baba in the camp/baba head down over the quran/baba backlit by the setting sun/agate eyes/baba has agate eyes/baba who gathers his words/wheat stalks in torn palms/collects his rage/gets into fist fights with giant men/collects his rage/i grew up convinced our father was a serial killer/stalking on wet asphalt/large brown leather hands/snapping necks/the remorseful kind of killer/moving through the hallways at 4am/retching/bent beneath my bedroom window/i was planted here/with more intention than care/like peppermint/the journey left me defective/scars on this infant’s body/i didn’t understand/i saw rage/i saw sickness/i saw furrowed brows/ baba didn’t pull me from the arms of death/he didn’t reappear with the ship to freedom/i couldn’t see his insides/insides suspended/in grief/in perturbation/made to resemble/embryo in formaldehyde.
Sara Al-Bahar is a Masters of Professional Writing student from the Waikato. Her work has been published in Mayhem, Poetry Aotearoa 2024 and Symposia. She clutches onto the dream of a peaceful world and a quiet home overlooking a large body of water.