- Olivia Brooks
- Oct 27
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 30
HOMECOMING THEME: A HOUSE INSIDE A HOUSE ON FIRE
After you pop a Xanax in the back of your brother’s Subaru Outback, you say
if we had two hearts each, we could totally give one away to one another.
The heat between us is thick enough to trigger an emergency sprinkler system.
Instead of cranking the air, your brother swigs a 64oz Big Gulp with one hand
and turns up 100.7 Classic Rock Radio’s Ballad Hour while steering with his knee.
He says he wants to set the mood by giving us real music to kiss to.
From the parking lot, the open gym doors look like a trap
for moths to flock into & die of shock.
This year, The Committee got really into metaphor
after reading a bunch of Plath in English class & wrote the slogan
find your home inside a burning thing. You once told me your dream
is to smoke a spliff in the Situation Room while the world burns
which means you imagine a future I could enter into.
We don’t even look back at your brother’s car to wave.
Inside, the homecoming royalty have already been doused in gasoline
& all around the gym, in the evening’s perfect fashion, the tinsel sparkles like white hot fire.
My Dream Vintage 2000 / Public Hostage Situation
God says let there be bleach
& then I’m blonde. I waltz out
in black chiffon & it’s An Ordeal.
Decked in my heart-throb glower,
my all-black couture, my curtain bangs,
I’m so chic, small-town
shockjocks dedicate hours of
who does he think he is to me.
Carpools plaster my body shots
on their bedroom walls & locker doors,
their sweet & tragic bombshell,
& everything goes shoegaze, androgyny,
& cigarettes. People magazine prophesies
my trainwreck era is around the corner.
I’m so flattered I leak a video of me
sobbing into a drink called A Cry for Help
while wearing an Iconic Black Lace Top
& I look so killer, everyone feels a little bad
for getting turned on while watching.
When the 24-hour news teams guesstimate
my Very Own Scandal is breaking
any time between tomorrow & tomorrow,
I get myself arrested lifting makeup from a Macy’s
& all of a sudden everyone wants
to wear Kat Von D’s #3 xxpose me.
A serious romantic agony is taking over the world.
To a captive audience, I say
everything you think you know about me is a lie.
Because it’s important to know your moment,
to have a little self-awareness.
That’s how you stay Hollywood.
That’s how you stay It Boy. You can’t smile
when the paparazzi brandish their cameras
& start shooting. When the flashes pop,
I like to let myself believe they’re blinking
twice for yes, just for me.
AUSTIN TUCKER received his MFA from Rutgers-Camden. His poetry has appeared in Four Chambers, Frontier, and Pleiades. His fiction has won the Masters Review Flash Fiction contest and was a semifinalist for the 2018 Halifax Ranch Prize. He lives in Athens, Ohio where he’s currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing.