HAFIZAH GETER

where to bury a missing girl

another girl has gone missing
and my sisters mistake themselves
for hunters, hair in updos, hands wild

with talk, determined to pull this girl-child
out from the congregants of the missing.
my sisters tune their bicycles,

write code in the street, lips smacking
against amber ringpops and skip-its.
armed with chalks and water guns,

they go door-to-door questioning friends
like strangers, interrogating boys.
singing, their whistle pops blow morse

code through driveways, their sinister game
flash flooding the neighborhood. our parents,
embarrassed, apologize to neighbors, their eyes tying

my sisters down like beloved pets. grounded,
unapologetic and angry, my sisters pace up
and down my room like spiders, worry spun

in a hiss of teeth that call out this gone girl's
name. crouched, biting my knees, i watch
their fingers, chalked and regrouping.

my sisters eye me with a gaze that grabs my wrists,
threatens to loosen my bladder, as if this man has already
pushed through my window screen. my sisters stare

as if this is no longer a game, as if i’ve already been
plucked, like someone who’s taken another's story,
superimposed it on their own.






Hafizah Geter is a South Carolina native currently living in Chicago, IL. She holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, RHINO, New Delta Review, Packingtown Review and NANO Fiction.



Boxcar Poetry Review - ISSN 1931-1761