Stephanie Berger / In the Madame's Hatbox

Stephanie Berger received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and her BA in Philosophy from the University of Southern California. Her poems have appeared most recently in Coconut, HoboEye and pax americana. She is “The Madame” and Artistic Director of The Poetry Brothel (www.thepoetrybrothel.com). Nathaniel, I have done something that will confuse us. It shapes a bit like a train moving both ways, closer to itself, a crumpled bridge, a badly wrapped gift. There is something inside. A bird cage could stand for a home, but it is on its side. Together we have lied, your wing on my head, and all this has been held. I have never been terrified of a cockroach. This moving both ways, not a sickness of seas. It is the raised muscle in the neck like an implant. It is my breasts with the lights out, or a tiny lamp and the dog hairs all over us I hardly notice, and the man that is a stiff drink in the morning that I do, and he is not you, and he is not him, and I am not