monique harris
family video / michigan
finally got that dream job twenty years too late / it’s been awhile
since i stepped into a video store / touched vhs / then dvd boxes
/ blockbusters / popcorn posters / summer /standing in rows
of horror / listening to a mother tell her son what’s really scary
/ late night tours / red bulb rooms / in five years all the major
video stores in this country will be closed / passers will glance
/ remember miraculous childhoods / orange sales forever / in
liquidation / someone will recall michael myers / someone else
crystal lake / plenty of decades babies debating what went wrong
/ lack of innovation / technology at its best /
when we were sisters you always let me choose first / romance /
comedy / sci-fi / horror / thrillers / always saturday nights / when
the world lived beyond / miami / dade county / florida / tales from
the crypt / red shoe diaries / rated and foreign / strangled subtitles
/ jurassic park / gremlins / blobs / stallone / i knew i had to make
my case strong / void of actors / actresses / directors / cause you
were clueless about stars / you wanted action / sky risers / burning
building escapes / gigantic frogs / killer tomatoes / mom’s worry
finally on display / years later we’ll pass the video store without
words / on the phone / on the future / still trying / for work / jobs
/ pinkie swears / forget about what it means to escape poseidon’s /
but some nights / we fall over the plot of some b rated movie /
thousands of miles apart / wonder how it could be made today /
if it could be made to day / black and white / cgi or real creatures
/ everything out of context / but somehow working / think about
tv tube screens / going blind / mom shouting for us to hurry /
accidental skittles / please be kind and rewind signs / suddenly
us again / even with late fees / at our cousin’s / at school / at the
friend’s / no one hiding yet / every opinion spoken / for the sake of
glorious saturdays / when mom transforms / and sisterhood lives
on / like yesterday / when sisters asked my opinion / about the 80s
/ how can i deny some kind of wonderful?
monique harris
Monique Harris has been a healer, a teacher, a dancer, an artist and fan of all things sci-fi and parallel realities. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Torch Literary Magazine, Packington Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Collateral, Moria, Talon Review, and others. Recently, she was awarded the 2023 Ephemera Good Contrivance Writing Residency. She has an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University and currently teaches at a community college in North Carolina. Her work can be found at monique-harris.com and she’s currently working on her first collection of poetry.