"Strip Show" Poetry by Sara Lier
"Strip Show" Poetry by Sara Lier
chuck campbell
-
Fri Sep 09, 2011 @ 04:07PM
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"Strip Show" Poetry by Sara Lier
First I’ll take off my scars:
the long one on my arm like stripping
tape from a fresh paint job,
the burn scars like picking up
pennies on the street.
Eat them, I’ll say,
and the front row’ll open their maws
and snap down on the skin-history I throw
between their teeth.
I’ll unscrew my uterus like a lightbulb and take out
my hairs one by one, first between the legs, then up
to the eyebrows, scalp. I will stand
bald and markless, and the crowd will coo.
Wait, I’ll say, you’ve seen nothing
yet. And I’ll pop out
my eyeballs: 1, 2.
I’ll put them in a paper tube
with cellophane stretched over each end
and shake them to a beat.
Meanwhile I’ll remove my nose
and set it spinning like a top.
My ears I’ll detach and wear
like bracelets. My feet will come off
with a little more difficulty--
I’ll have to sit and pry
them one at a time. The toes’ll wiggle the way
they say a chicken does if you cut off the head.
I will remove my own head
to demonstrate the connection.
Gentlemen, the mouth will say,
my final act. Somewhere
a gramophone will click on
with a swanky song, and I will hold each
breast like a brass knob
and I’ll part my ribs like French doors
swinging open. I’ll untie
my arteries with one pull, easy
as shoestring. The crowd will cock
themselves forward to see,
but my heart will plop out, splat.
Indecent on the floor.
Behind it there will be a room with white curtains.
There is only one person sleeping there.
Gentlemen, I’ll say,
and the curtains will blow in the wind.
Sara Lier is a student living in New Jersey. Her poetry has recently appeared in Inkwell Journal, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Conte, So to Speak, and Cloudbank, where she received a prize for the best poem in that issue. In addition, she received Brooklyn College's Academy of American Poets prize in 2007, and one of her poems was chosen by the academy for an anthology of prize winners from the last decade. She is currently looking for a publisher for her first chapbook collection.
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