Jaz Sufi
Magic Trick
a golden shovel after Jonterri Gadson’s “Advice”
When I was a child, my father couldn’t decide if he was either
a father or also a child. My mother was a mother’s mother. A
woman who knew how to stay. She knew not to look a good
man in the mouth, but she counted each of Dad’s teeth when that man
came home late. He was quick to floss away the evidence, but he never
fooled her. She knew all his tricks & tells — late night walks
& early morning meetings, all while he hid other women behind
him like a magician’s second deck of cards. If you met him, you
would never guess what cruelty he was capable of, or
how much of it my mother could contain. If you
asked my father if he loved his wife, his family, he’d never
say no. No was a woman’s word. Before I even learned to stand,
I knew Dad loved me, but I soon learned there was nothing behind
that love. Dad loved the idea of loving us. He reaped a
father’s harvest from the neighbors, devoured all their good
graces, but in truth, he was a cardboard cutout of a family man.
And yet years later, he had an accident — cracked his skull as if
it was a bell, & my father awoke a changed man. I
know it sounds like some sitcom scenario, a story he could
spin for someone’s sympathy, but no. Suddenly, Dad couldn’t recall
why he was standing so far away from his family, or where
he’d left all his grievances. He renewed his apologies to my
mother with words from his own heart, not that of his father.
By then, we were too tall to be carried on his shoulders, but he stood
taller, too, like a lighthouse & less like a cliff. When
my brother & I talk about him now, we call him New Dad. New Dad, he
bought binoculars. Knows all the backyard birds by name. He told
me about them last time I went back home — we sat outside, me
& New Dad, & each time a new song limned the silence, I’d
listen to him instead, & when he asked Did you know—? I’d pretend not to know.
Jaz Sufi reads “Magic Trick”
Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a mixed race Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in The Adroit Journal, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Apollo.