during previews, known in marketing as premonitions.
Air-conditioned caramel sticks in my fillings, scolds me

of the form-fitting mouth-guard at home for not clenching
molars, incisors, the shut-up, don’t-say-it,

that Plasticine “everything’s alright here.” I could lose
a tooth, pathway to the grave, and you’re a sad-

sack of wet popcorn as the film hovers
through the darkness like the USS Enterprise.

My brain flickers—which words to use—I can’t read
subtitles and feel at the same time.

You bandage your hand with mine.
I don’t want to sit in the theater with you anymore—

I think you should set yourself on fire,
just don’t go calling it a sunset. I’ve pulled your adapter out

of my plug forever, no more free electricity,
no, I don’t want to light you up. Give me

back my own fire, my lava lamp, my marcher’s torch.
How could I ever think it fine

to let you burn me with my own heat. There’s the exit,
sear your own wounds shut

now.

The post Cineplex, Fire Exit appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The post The Short History of Sexting appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Knocked up at twenty, after two previous abortions, she hadn’t wanted to test her luck with a Lord she wasn’t totally sure didn’t exist. She had left her local progressive radio station to marry the teaching assistant from her mass communications class. He was the one who had knocked her up. Now, twelve years later, she knew there was indeed a God and his main purpose was to torture her. She knew that seemed self-important to think, but her husband was balding, now overweight, still sleeping with his students. He did it the way many women eat chocolate, compulsively, secretly, with great melt-in-the-mouth relish. He was a connoisseur of Bambis: Young, long legged fawns with blonde hair. What she had been, and if truth be told, still was.
She had grown to believe it was her destiny to be punished like this, ignored, cheated upon, devoured on Saturday nights after Washington Week in Review. She no longer even realized when men looked at her, so busy was she with the details of living day to day, until she saw him. He must be the new guy, she thought, his dreadlocks sweated in the greasy light, a patchouli and oil rigged smell gurgling from of him. She had neglected to find out his name, the way he put his greasy palm print on her face, the way she licked the roof of his mouth, the way it tasted of new car smell and licorice.

Elizabeth Powell’s first book of poems, The Republic of Self, won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Post Road, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. Her essay “Infidelities” appeared in My Mother Married Your Father, an anthology of essays on step-families, published by WW Norton. She teaches at the University of Vermont, and is poetry editor of Green Mountains Review.

*Photo courtesy of Eve of Discovery.

The post Jiffy Lube, Byway 17, North Medford, IL appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

When men shoot
baskets they are
doing a fertility dance–
they put it Alley–
oop, through
the womb
hoop.

And the man
whose wife
cannot   produce
an heir (out
of the invisible air)

plays a pick up
game on Sundays,
mystery ritual, replaying
his failures over and over,
shoot and miss,

a technical foul, where
he’s got hometown advantage, smell
of gymnasium wax, hot
dogs, damp wool and shampoo,
a nickname, the point of
a lay-up, a poem
he wants me

to write, revise for him,
something he will give
his wife. The poem
where he buries the deflated,
dead ball he finds by the coursing river
into the   good earth because

she   knows
what the meaning is–
that he loved her, that he couldn’t
stand the truth–how he’s squandering
his vitality on a sport
he’ll never win. Men provoking
each other to gain control
mostly of themselves.

Elizabeth Powell’s first book of poems, The Republic of Self, won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Post Road, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. Her essay “Infidelities” appeared in My Mother Married Your Father, an anthology of essays on step-families, published by WW Norton. She teaches at the University of Vermont, and is poetry editor of Green Mountains Review.

*Photo courtesy of riebschlager.

The post Skywalker appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

That needs drenching, how they hang from windows
Aiming their arguments at the longwinded,
Schoolyard bullies or university presidents or poets.

I love the way the water balloon throwers want
To soak and stun the wet truth into someone who needs
A waking up. I believe in the nobility of the water
Balloon throwers, how they can storm a situation, turning

Grown-up chaos into orderly satire, like the brigade
In my old apartment building, our water balloon religion,
An Upper West Side sect, I had been baptized in.
How we learned water pressure torture tactics

One hot summer while our non-violent Fathers shook
Frozen drinks to Santana in their Women’s Rights t shirts,
And our mothers dutifully cooked hippie food
In the kitchen, scolding us not to hit our brothers.

I want to say there is a kind of excellence to the water
Balloon thrower who douses the most unaware
And tragically hip grown-up sneaking off from the party
With the babysitter because he wants to forget just how

Crazy the man’s world can be. I want to say something
Condescending to those who take themselves this seriously,
To those who shun the water balloon thrower, for it is the water
Balloon thrower who is willing to get wet, letting

The revolution come water balloon by water balloon, hurled, red or blue.
That’s why we have to catch what they have, however precarious,
Ready to burst, we have to let that ammunition be
Our truth, our hydrogen-oxygen-strength.

Elizabeth Powell’s first book of poems, The Republic of Self, won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Post Road, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. Her essay “Infidelities” appeared in My Mother Married Your Father, an anthology of essays on step-families, published by WW Norton. She teaches at the University of Vermont, and is poetry editor of Green Mountains Review.

*Photo courtesy of aithom2.

The post For the Water Balloon Throwers appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.