Deborah Bogen

From the Iowa Review

Cantilevered Bedtime Story

Wallpaper farm, the girl
with the duck, the friendly
farmer's father-work,
the moony mother's queer
stare and the bee-hivey
haystacks, the pitchforks,
the curly cows by the pond.

Elsewhere a window frames
green light. Elsewhere,
the dark-hall-doorway,
the long walk to the kitchen's
grown-up talking. The Singer
in the corner, electric
and shiny and under the bed,
and under the bed...

O happy wallpaper girl,
the cow wants to give you
her milk. The father's pitchfork
is strong and serene, but what
can be done for the woman
in the fluttering apron
who gaze is seaward, and
elsewhere, and gone?

Iowa Review April 2008
copyright, Deborah Bogen

Quick Links

to order Let Me Open You a Swan click here

To order Landscape with Silos click here

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Authors Guild

Poems You May Not Have Read Yet

OCTOBER POEM

A train pulls into the station. Passengers break like billiard balls, glide to cars and buses. Ezekiel the pushcart vendor hawks his hot potatoes. This is the month of the dead and the undead. We wrap our hands around good fortune, shove them deep into our pockets.

The moon's been reincarnated, a baby afloat in the amniotic sky. It makes us think about our next lives when perfection will be our undergarments. In our next lives, we think, our eyes will shine like truth's own saucers. But for now it's October, month of witches, of prayers to the old gods. We toss confetti, clap our hands three times. Crows cackle as they rise.

this is from "Living by the Children's Cemetery"

GHOST IMAGES

1/
The mind's a mad cupboard, blackened silver, cups and thimbles.
The mind's a jerky focusing machine still stuck on the girl
who hung by her knees.

And within the camera [opening : closing] - fireworks.
I mean, within the empty box the light's frantic,
grappling with: the monk, the match, the gasoline.

The mind is like-wise occupied, its light piteously stark, distorted
- but which of us can ever look away?

2/
Into the angular cranium levers lift cold light, but
how dark and small the box.
And hands must hold the camera still, so stop your breath.

[so stop your breath]

That's how you'll coax it into the box, something bloody or blood-lit,
a headless rooster or snipe - your attention split.

Seeing the two worlds.

this poem was first published in Crazyhorse --- a great journal I hope you will check out.

Selected Works

poetry

LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN

Winner of the 2009 Antivenom from Elixir Press "What we have in Deborah Bogen's 'Let Me Open You a Swan' is sublime poetry, the rare gift of a terrifying look into the shaping of a warrior poet and her work. Michelle Mitchell-Foust.

Poetry

SOME NEWER POEMS

Here are some poems that are not in either book.

Poetry

LANDSCAPE WITH SILOS

Landscape With Silos was a National Poetry Series Finalist and Winner of the 2005 XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize

"Deb Bogen writes poetry that is naked and necessary, unadorned and political, intelligent and genereous. The book brims with intelligence." ---Carol Frost

LIVING BY THE CHILDREN'S CEMETERY

Living by the Children's Cemetery was Winner of the 2002 ByLine Press Chapbook Competition

Judge Edward Hirsch commented that the book "provides a profound answer to the poet's own call for 'someting sinister, something/ fragile, something Bessie Smith/ could sing.'"