Rachel Becker
The Knack
For Iain
When I finally realize that the guy who’s calling
my dorm room answering to your name is a stranger
and he’s jerking off, I remember how I loved you first
and how you fell for my most beautiful friend.
At prom we’d danced in the Shriner’s Hall
where dusty portraits of brooding men
watched us thrash through the stuttering chorus
of “My Sharona,” but you were just my arm candy,
dazzling onlookers I no longer even cared about
dazzling. So when the man on the phone asks me
am I wearing stilettos, I answer the same way I did
when you dipped me mid-dance and called me angel,
No, I’m not. You and I were good friends,
but the kind of good that never fulfilled its promise.
It takes me too long to hang up on him, this man
on the phone. Surprised by the slick hydraulics
on the other end, I freeze. I know it isn’t you
on the line, could never have been you.
But I was perpetually late to the party of my own body
and tired of being mistaken for a saint.
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Image by Femme Spirit from Unsplash
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Rachel Becker's poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals including North American Review, Post Road, Rust + Moth, Wild Roof, MER, SoFloPoJo, Crab Orchard Review, and RHINO. She is a poetry editor for Porcupine Literary: a journal for and by teachers and a finalist for the 2025 Jack McCarthy Prize. She lives in Boston.
