What Rough Beast | Poem for October 23, 2019

Lauren Hilger
Error of the ingénue

Let me in I said and banged at the piano,
banged at the mesh swing door
because I saw a way in.

Some light opened a man’s chest,
no not him, not him.

It followed, if I got it right, I would receive something
larger than the visible returns. The terms would change.

I once let a stranger carry me home. He said it wasn’t safe.
Said someone could pick me up and take me somewhere.

The softest part of my head dipped.
Collar bones up. I let him carry me.

Once in the meatpacking district, a man started shaking

when I appeared,
he opened his wallet, his zipper,

take everything I have,
he said, just don’t hurt me.

Lauren Hilger is the author of Lady Be Good (CCM, 2016.) Named a Nadya Aisenberg Fellow in poetry from the MacDowell Colony, she has also received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has appeared or forthcoming in BOMB, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review online, Kenyon Review online, Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for No Tokens.

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