2 poems by Rebekah Bergman

 

To Make a Woman into a Monster

 

 

First you must strip her

of a nonessential body part.

You could replace this

with something symbolic and sinister

or else leave her

bare, bald, and alone.

 

Next you must give her a power

nobody would ever want

to wield over anyone.

You should make it passive;

she doesn’t do it to others,

they do it to themselves

just because she is there.

 

Of course you must make her ugly

from birth or as a consequence

for some minor atrocity.

Also, it helps to make other women envy her

despite her obvious monstrosity.

 

Lastly make her death heroic,

a triumph in someone else’s story.

That way when we think of her later,

it is only in passing

when we talk about him.

 

 

 

We will probably have to apologize for this later

 

 

‘Let’s make sure we don’t do anything

to provoke wrong action’

Stephen,

we thought it was pretty inventive

the way you used the royal we there.

It was like we stepped right into it

like we knew where we were going

and went there, didn’t we?

 

You wanted to talk about ‘what guys shouldn’t do’

so you set the example then later

you said sorry.

 

We knew you knew you were wrong

And we both knew you probably deserved

more than the suspension.

 

‘But at the same time’

when you said you didn’t mean it

we thought you meant it.

 

It could have been the way you said ‘egregious’

or how the tie you were wearing was really just asking for it

who knows what you could have done

‘to prevent the situation from happening’

 

maybe you could have been born a woman

or seen a man once beat your sister

or maybe it would have always been impossible

to make this violence your problem

and not just our own.

 

 

 

Rebekah Bergman writes short stories and poetry. Her recent work has appeared in Necessary Fiction and Literary Orphans, among others. A chapbook of her prose poems is forthcoming from White Knuckle Press. Rebekah is an MFA candidate at The New School.