Growing up, we called it a cooter.
If I braked suddenly on my boy’s
bike and hit myself there,
pain shot up into my jaws.
I’d clench my teeth and just
wait for agony to fade.
My friends called over,
did you hit your cooter?
I nodded and giggled.
Later, taking the stairs
at church, the beige
walls and carpeting
in the staircase turned
chute when a boy boxed me
in and grabbed me there.
Years later in New York,
a guy went for my crotch
as I got off a train, so I whacked
him hard with a library book.
What did he think? I’d unpin
my hair, take off my glasses,
like those movie librarians?
Even a soft-spoken woman
goes steely mad if forced
into that corral one
too many times.
Her reflexes kick in.
So, if I’m a Marilyn to you,
the one you think is a prize
for the taking, hang out
in an empty staircase,
a crowded subway,
or bus stop,
at your own risk.
Melinda Thomsen’s full-length collection, Armature, is forthcoming in 2021 from Hermit Feathers Press, and her chapbooks, Naming Rights and Field Rations, are from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Stone Coast Review,Tar River Poetry, The Comstock Review, Poetry East, North Carolina Literary Review, among others. She teaches at Pitt Community College in North Carolina.