“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.

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