Kayla Sargeson

Masturbating to Hannibal Rising

It must have been the German accent,
or maybe the violence.
I felt a warmth between my legs,
a wetness I couldn’t ignore.
I took my hot pink toy from my underwear drawer,
slathered her with lube
(every thing that fucks me becomes my sex).
My body moved in time with the vibrations.
I love the part of me that is turned on by the perverse,
the part of me that likes to be fucked until I bleed
while I can’t decide if I’m feeling pleasure or pain.

When the soldiers took the girl,
little Mischa,
outside to be slaughtered,
I came.

 

He Says All Tattooed Chicks Like to Be Choked

21 years old/was an extra in a Nickelodeon show/
his friend shows me the Wikipedia page while I’m behind the counter
at my weekend job at a hot dog shop.
He says, Girl I could fit four wieners in you.
I came back here to get your name.
The guy in front of him in line’s laughing.
I’m thinking of teeth on my thigh,
fingers on my throat, but not his.
Maybe four years ago I’d buy into it—
he says, Girl, I know you’re freaky.
I just like a little excitement
to break up the thrust/thrust/jackhammer.

Last weekend I fucked a guy in my black tutu.
He says, Your pussy says yes,
but your eyebrows say you’re somewhere else.
We all do it—go somewhere else sometimes.
Where do you go?
I was thinking of someone else,
some guy down South I want to fuck,
but I know enough not to say the truth.
Instead, I let him leave, promise to call.

Pittsburgh, Winter

My father grabs my stepbrother by the throat
for calling my stepmother a bitch.
My father says he does this because he loves my stepbrother,
wants him to be a good man.
I know a woman who lives inside her head,
has an imaginary dragon living in her purse.
She can pull it out whenever she needs it.
Real life is so boring, she says.
Even Warhol agrees: Everybody must have a fantasy.
I’m stuck on the details of living:
the sound a 13-year-old boy makes when he’s shoved against a wall,
the Pittsburgh graffiti artist who sprayed “help” on concrete.
There’s been no escape since I quit getting high.
A friend has been sending me pictures of his cock
and I’m wondering if we’re still friends.
There’s no one I can ask this.
I stay in my yellow house and watch shows
about people getting shot and blown up,
imagining the ghost of the barber who
cut hair in what’s now my dressing area.
I still dream about the guy I loved in Chicago,
imagine seeing him putting money in the meter,
hurrying into Mario’s.
Is it enough to say I’m lonely?
That I’m sure if you pounded a hole through my hand
you’d see him on the other side?

 

Kayla Sargeson has studied with the poets Jan Beatty, Tony Trigilio, and D. A. Powell. Her chapbook Mini Love Gun was published by Main Street Rag. Her poems appear in 5 AM,Columbia Poetry Review, and Chiron Review.