Poem of the Week | December 04, 2023

This week’s Poem of the Week is “T-Rex” by Lynne Ellis.

Lynne Ellis (she/they) writes in pen. Their words appear in the North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Sonora Review, and many other beloved journals and anthologies. Awarded the Perkoff Prize from the Missouri Review and the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she believes every poem is a collaboration. More on Instagram @stagehandpoet. Lynne serves on the editorial board at Nimrod International Journal and is co-editor at Papeachu Press, supporting the voices of women and nonbinary creators.

T-Rex

I’m wearing a bad bra
in the T-Mobile store when
Stephen the Mobile Expert
tries to upsell me on data
plans & throw in an extra
Galaxy S23 for free & a
third line for free & free
codes for more free devices
with plans that (for free) I can
cancel at six months (no charge).
But hey I want to say
to Stephen a person made
that with their hands & breath
on a factory floor carved
in long days. But Stephen
isn’t here for that story.
I need this new phone I
need it so with hot pink light
& white plastic buffed walls
& sense overload on a
picnic with my anxiety
here I am I am wasting
my first day of spring
after a growler of a
winter & the earth like
an old planet is losing
its memory & I’m changing too
my arms are cramping up &
growing claws & my bad bra
starts to pull & ache &
the band constricts like a
reptile & the underwires
stretch & snap their curvature
& my breasts pour out & hooks
pop free from wire eyes & lace
tears off the craggy brackish
skin of my back & my
ragged clothes fall as the bra
races them to the floor where
it lands at my seismic foot
with three talons & killing
claw & I open my maw
to bellow my megafauna
bellow & I swallow
poor Stephen in one chomp
& turn the great wedge of my
body to the side &
the store manager collides
with my tail while I lift one
hallux to smash the displays
into my open mouth
crunching glass & solder &
metal & transistors
chewing them down into my
guts where they blend with a
masticated human who
until today was trying
to make a living in
a country choking on the
screen & money worship
called robust economy
as it crushed some of us
& turned the rest of us
into monsters.

Author’s Note

T-Rex is from my collection, Future Sketchbook, which pairs images of prehistoric animals with modern conundrums. As I write these poems, and read others like them, I embrace a specific hope: maybe a future naturalist will find some joy in discovering what humans were. And, perhaps, another hope: unlike the non-avian dinosaurs, we’ve been gifted a warning. We don’t have to accept our own extinction.