60 for 60: The Sexual Benefits of Upright Walking

By Maithu Koppolu

From the Spring of 1997 comes Matthew Brogan’s poem “The Sexual Benefits of Upright Walking” about the body, its functions, and the very substance with which we proceed. Likening the body to a vessel and that vessel to its functions, Brogan’s piece from the twenty-eighth issue of Columbia Journal is about intention, the desire to understand, and the wherewithal to continue forward. Using language to denote the way we progressed throughout history, from tails to four legs to two legs to a straight spine, Brogan masterfully relays the journey we’ve begun and perhaps are still on. 

Brogan’s work has appeared in the Antioch Review, Brooklyn Rail, Chelsea, Court Green, Denver Quarterly, Phoebe, The Rumpus, Verse, and other literary magazines. He is also the editor of This Place (Hatje Cantz, 2019). 

The Sexual Benefits of Upright Walking

Matthew Brogan


It involves hidden ovulation
and the freeing of the hands

for the invention of gifts
which may help to explain

the practice of marriage
but it's only a theory

and it could have been something else
like the heat or the arrival of mountains

after all it was a long time ago
and there's not much to go on

but the gossip of bones.