fiction, poetry & more

2014
POETRY OPEN
Second Place
$100 Award

STRIP

by Sara Backer

This is me,
your friend,
on the table
stripping.
Don’t look away.

You made
this table
what it is:
ate off it,
wrote on it,
bruised your hip
against it.
You made
it yours.

But I am
grinding hard,
peeling off
layers
of varnish,
getting down
to deep scars,
yours and
mine,
and I keep
stripping.

I use
power tools
and chemicals.
My old shirt
wipes grit
out of rough
grooves.

It’s becoming
smooth flesh
under sand
paper. It’s time
to come
clean.

My friend,
embrace
your wife.
Leave this table
unfinished.

______________________________

Sara Backer (a Gemini) has new poems coming out this year in The Rialto, Arc, Gargoyle, Crab Creek Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, A cappella Zoo, and Carve. She lives in New Hampshire and teaches composition at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

June 2014