I am the Bride
by Trish Hopkinson
When I really like a girl
I call her ”kiddo.”
I am a loner,
the way I talk with my hands [laughing]
like Elvis Presley on crack, all right?
You get comfortable with your own company—
read, listen to music . . .
It’s like, no worries.
But you can get bored with it.
That can happen.
A little bit of—yeah, okay, exactly—
It’s a mixed bag.
I am able to truly, in this town, live
the life of an artist,
create something—
one big book about comic books,
spaghetti Westerns, and Hong Kong kung fu films—
a cool little story and everyone liked it.
I am the Bride.
The characters are also me
with little feminine tendencies.
Sometimes I want to look handsome,
dress in nice stuff . . .
More of an old sexy lion,
style is cranked up,
you know, la-di-da!
Johnny Depp,
Daniel Day-Lewis,
they got it going on.
It’s a total fantasy,
a snide side in real life.
A decade ain’t enough.
This little journey?
Too much of a left turn.
It’s a look at the world.
It completely and utterly is.
SOURCE: “Total Tarantino” by Mary Kaye Schilling, Entertainment Weekly (4/9/2004).
IMAGE: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have a thing for Tarantino films and have followed him since he first graced Sundance with Reservoir Dogs back in 1992. He’s got a vivid personality and a quirky way of expressing himself, which I thought would be fun to capture in a found piece. The phrases I used are mostly verbatim from the article and I just reordered to create the poem.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Trish Hopkinson loves words and digs poetry slams. Her mother tells everyone that she was born with a pen in her hand. She has been published in several journals, including The Found Poetry Review, Chagrin River Review, and Verse-Virtual. She recently received awards in the Utah Arts Festival’s IronPen competition and from the League of Utah Writers for her poetry anthology, Emissions. She is a project manager by profession and resides in Utah with her handsome husband and two outstanding children. Visit her at trishhopkinson.com.
Silver Birch Press 