Sara Backer, “Shifting”

Sara Backer, “Shifting”

E.E. Cummings Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Marcia Karp

Sara Backer‘s first book of poetry, Such Luck, follows two chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt, and Bicycle Lotus, which won the Turtle Island Chapbook Award. Recent poem publications include Lake Effect, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Ireland, and Salamander. She lives in New Hampshire and reads for The Maine Review.

Shifting

A tree fell across the driveway
on a full moon. A second tree fell

a month later, another full moon
landing in the same spot.

A hawk flew hard toward me,
hit glass—and rose to fly again.

A bullet flew past me while I
practiced piano. The window broke.

Whom I thought hated me
actually loved. I didn't know

until a freak and fatal
accident. How much life

is schedules, busywork—how little
understanding.