Laurel Ann Bogen is the author of ten books of poetry and short fiction, including Washing a Language; Fission; The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies and Rag Tag We Kiss. In 2016 Red Hen Press will publish All of the Above: New and Selected Poems 1975-2015. She is a recipient of the Pacificus Foundation’s Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize, two awards from the Academy of American Poets and a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination. Her work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines and anthologies including The Maverick Poets, California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Stand Up Poetry.
*****
Narrow Beds
The spare honest lines
of my girlhood intersect
with wood and linen
Corners neatly tucked
I dreamt alone
with a radio
under my pillow
to ease the nightly terrors
Vampires sucked the dark
Death coaxed slyly
like Southern Comfort
I dreamt alone
long legs became longer
sinew and joint extended
Terror shifted from vertebrae to groin
The womb drummed insistently
rapists scuttled from street lamps
I hunted boundaries
chanted pregnant lists
of lovers and college lecturers
clocked the seconds
from impulse to scream
slept in sheets of wild control
The demarcation of form —
bed, body, dream —
the weight of cloth
bore me down
There was a limit
a finite space
my body could not slip away.
***
(Avalanche)
(my secret name) frozen tundra glints in moonlight as precise as this icicle while fault lines slash dissident crags into mountains and the Gestapo waits outside the window in the snow with its dogs (will you say it?)
***
The Mother’s Room
and this too is me
the dull sheen of purple jersey
daughter as crone
and behind that door
the mother’s room
unknown women tend her
blonde mother of the plains
silent girls offer reflections to kiss
a cord to my abdomen glistens and throbs
and she spins that cord
and she spins and she twists
and when she is old
she spins
and when she is dead
she spins
***
The Power Lines Are Down
Current spilling into current
I am cross-wired
aborted energy
mad with voltage
I flash neon signals
Love me
you
Fool
I spill all crazy
the fusion
of teashops and suicides
coming and going
without shieldings
Meltdown
meltdown
whalebone and garter
I will not be confined
by steel casings
or wedding rings
my name is preceded
by a warning —
the power lines are down
love me
***
Vulnerable Street
You have no idea
but gear and shift
engine ramming the dark
the moon has no lock
as you race down Vulnerable Street
in the twilight
your hair flies like an exclamation
forgive me it wails
such consideration
is the stuff of barricades
the cinderblocks I stack
one by one
against you
Author photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher