Spoiler Alert
Titanic sinks. The femme fatale’s a guy.
Romeo and Juliet both die.
So do Butch and Sundance, Bonnie and Clyde,
Thelma and Louise, and Jekyll and Hyde.
Private Ryan’s saved, and Nemo’s found.
The cowboy rides the A-bomb to the ground.
Little Sheba, Jimmy Dean, and Shane
do not come back. The narrator’s insane.
The girl’s her sister, and her daughter too.
He’s his murderous mother. Scout meets Boo.
In everything but Triumph of the Will,
the Nazis lose. His life ends Pottersville.
He’s Vader’s son. He’s Santa Claus. He’s dead.
She just keeps walking. Rosebud is a sled.
Romeo and Juliet both die.
And someday, so do you. And so do I.
A longtime participant of Eratosphere (Able Muse’s online poetry workshop), Julie Steiner is also a member of the international task force to preserve and promote the late British poet M. A. Griffiths’ literary legacy. Julie lives in San Diego, California.