Dark Horse Portal

for Deb

Portal is a video game

where you wield a gun that shoots

holes. One you go into, one you come

out of, each end delicately placed on the wall,

facing one another in Escherian drama.

In this portal, Mommy is a robot,

and the robot puts you through hell. But let's

not talk tech. In life, disparate points

may also be connected. See: leading group fitness

classes back when my body could

hold my bottomless desire for pain; and ten

years later, seated on the floor of a “dungeon”

in a nondescript New Jersey Holiday Inn,

wrapped in the arms of the woman who’s

just lavished bruises upon my ass and thighs.

But Nat, you're burying the lede.

This poem is really about “Dark Horse,” Katy

Perry’s 2013 “witchy and dark” pop hit, the video

where she, uh . . . pretends to be Egyptian?

Yeah, that song.…