TWO POEMS

Gabby Bess

SATAN’S TOUCH

I’ll never again visit Ikea!

Never again!

Sit in the parking garage

Wanting to throw up

Or be killed

Never again!

Contort for softness

Collapse the boundaries

Of what I ask for

Thanks to online shopping

BDSM

Technologies that cool

Domesticity

Replace the past

With new objects

Instantly

A form-fitting cage

Holds cis dick

Stilettos step

On a man’s chest

Rope ties his hands

Behind his back

Drapes a pentagram

Across his chest

Spit bastes his face

Glistens

Links to a firm mattress pad

And memory foam pillows

Make his bed suitable

The innovation of ball mashing!

Has completely imploded

My former paradigm

Is it good?

To develop the appetite

Of a pig

When thrust into

The stables with pigs

To do violence

Against violence?

The rock where you sleep

In your luxury condo

Is this for me?

FAKE TO BE REAL

I resent this world

Makes me woman

Quite clearly

I’m a Kewpie doll

In time out

In the clouds

Or a skink

The name of which I

Searched after seeing

Its photo in my feed

(“Lizard with a snake body”)

This thing that’s too much

To exist and barely does

Except online and in a poem

I’m holding a doll’s shell

To my doll ear like hello

I’m not here right now

Still I have my thingness

And I want more of it

Beyond woman

Which I retired

I used to want

To be nothing

I laid down

I made a big fuss

But dying halfheartedly

Is a long life of pain

Gabby Bess (@seemstween) is a multi-media artist and the author of the poetry and short story collection, Alone With Other People.