“This thing has wheels,” and other poems, Katherine Bogen.
Meatloaf and I have beef
Is there any humiliation so great
that I’d refuse
to kneel before it?
None exist,
I have decided.
I would do anything for love.
Yes, even that.
Neither of us smoke
Maybe in another world,
you lay your head in my lap
and I read to you
and we split a Black & Mild.
I say we’re risking cancer
and you tell me, “Life is a carcinogen,”
between puffs of dark vanilla smoke.
When you kiss me,
my death anxiety understands
and makes itself mercifully scarce.
When you open my body,
I almost believe that
I’ll never die.
Soloist
An orgasm is a little death.
You killed me so many times,
I learned to do it all by myself.
The hunger and the thirst
I’m not really into feet or blood,
in general,
except there’s no part of you
I don’t want in my mouth.
The self is the world and I’m a therapist’s bedroom on a warm day in the late 90s
What if I am letting myself into
the bright beautiful room of myself?
What if I am the door and the ceiling fan,
the fluff rug, the candles and the matchsticks,
the windows without blinds,
the corner lamp, the birch wood bed frame,
the throw pillowcases with
the values and emotion wheels.
What if I am every bright, beautiful thing in
the bright, beautiful room of myself?
What if I’m the book propping open
the storm screen?
What if I’m the dimmer switch
and the heated floors?
Every single Edison bulb?
I’m the bower girl. I’m the sunny overhead.
The guard dog and the concierge.
The wall mounted telephone and the Bop-It
and the piano keys.
So bright.
I am.
So beautiful.
This thing has wheels
When it snows, I think about you
and the violence of your bicycle.
Accidental sadism still counts
You turned me into a masochist
without an ounce of intentional sadism.
I’m not sure if that means we were doomed
or meant to be.
Katherine Bogen is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is affiliated with the Violence Intervention for Survivors of Trauma and Abuse (VISTA) Lab (DiLillo) & the Women, Immunity, and Sexual Health (WISH) Lab (Lorenz). Katie works at the intersections of violence prevention and human sexuality research, and is interested in the development, facilitation, and robust evaluation of intervention programs designed to assuage posttraumatic sexual symptoms.