ONE ART’s 2024 Best of the Net nominations
Sandra Rivers-Gill – D’Anjou
Carol Boston – Great Lady Descending
Brett Warren – Origami of Shock
Sara Backer – After Fourteen Years
Tom Gengler – The Clinic Squares
John Amen – The 80s
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Congratulations to all our nominees!
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More information about Best of the Net here.
After Fourteen Years
I confess to my best friend that when he abruptly stops
snoring and lies with his back to me, weirdly quiet, I fear
he might no longer be alive. Not wanting to wake him,
I strain to hear his breath. I raise my head and squint
in the dark to see if his breath is stretching his ribs. Failing that,
I touch his neck, my fingers reassured by his slight motion.
I expect him to reply with a joke. I know if he says yes,
I’m dead, don’t bother me he means he is afraid to voice
the truth dressed up in mawkish clothes for fear we’ll start
to wear them. But sensed truth untold is slippery—apt to flip
flop or go askew—much the same as expectations, because
he says, I do that, too, when you are sick, your body so still—
—and I think but don’t say maybe I die, but I come back for you.
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Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck, follows two chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt, and Bicycle Lotus, which won the Turtle Island Chapbook Award. Her honors include a prize in the Plough Poetry Competition, nine Pushcart nominations, and fellowships from the Norton Island and Djerassi resident artist programs. Recent publications include Lake Effect, Slant, Poetry Northwest, and Poetry Ireland. She currently lives in New Hampshire and reads for The Maine Review.
I Rock the Ulu
I wear gloves
to chop swordfish.
Coal burning, gold
mining, push
heavy metal
into water,
into air.
Swordfish
aren’t dying out.
Kings in the food chain,
unchained in waves,
they dance and slash
like humans.
I’ve decided
this will be the final
fish I eat. I’ll give
it one last chance
to kill me.
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Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck (Flowstone Press) follows two poetry chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press) and Bicycle Lotus which won the 2015 Turtle Island chapbook award. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art and reads for The Maine Review. Recent and forthcoming publications include Tar River Poetry, Slant, CutBank, Lake Effect, Poetry Northwest, and Kenyon Review.
After My Father Died
I longed to spend time with him in a dream
but over two years passed without one. I’m afraid I’ll forget
how he whistled Cole Porter and the way he squeezed
his eyes when he stuttered on Ws. When a dream came at last,
I heard his voice—but couldn’t see him.
I looked around: an outdoor festival, stage tents, musicians.
My sister waited in one of the tents. My father, invisible,
said I could continue to hear him or I could be with my sister.
The choice was presented like chicken or fish—no other options,
I couldn’t have both, and it was up to me.
I looked beyond stages to overlapping hills streaked with mist.
Too far to see, I knew a weighty ocean rolled indifferent through its tides.
Nothing more was voiced. As I walked to the tent,
I saw my sister’s thick blue sweater on the seat beside her,
saved for me.
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Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck (Flowstone Press 2019) follows two poetry chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press) and Bicycle Lotus which won the 2015 Turtle Island chapbook award. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art and reads for The Maine Review. Recent publications include The Pedestal Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Slant, CutBank and Kenyon Review.
