5 Poems

Newlyweds

I’m already anticipating all the moments
Of locking myself in the bathroom
With a cigarette and
Glass of wine

Escaping you
And your
Never-ending need
For me

I’m already anticipating all the times
You will cheat on me
With your ex,
W a woman from high school,
W a woman from a dating app you haven’t yet
Been banned from

Because of my never-ending need
For alone time in the bathroom

Away from you

Sobbing

A gut feeling you’re cheating
Again

The glass of red wine and cigarette
so damn good
on the toilet seat
Without you

Googling “irritated vulva”
After fucking three times
After your hunting trip
Up north
After viewing your ex
On the steps of her
Double wide:
Cigarette, bronzer, pills
A decade of your life
Before me.

How to Buy Instagram Followers

The first time Nico called me I was pacing my house
With a shot of whiskey, the dog following
My husband still at his campus office
Another hour

It was April, 2019
The Monday after our shared birthday
Tho I didn’t know then
We shared a birthday
I barely knew anything, then
Nico was still in prison
the warden – Mr. Nicely - denied me visitation
and I considered burning my house down
There wasn’t much else to know

The last time Nico called me I was
Sitting on my porch with a beer and a cigarette
It was just before or just after Thanksgiving, 2020
I forget which

Nico was no longer in prison
I was divorced
Nico was or wasn’t yet married
There wasn’t much else to know.

Titties

I was thinking this morning
About how when your son came in my house
He pointed to the photograph of Miley Cyrus
On the cover of a Rolling StoneI had on display
On a magazine rack

“I know,” you said.
“But she’s covering them,” you said, meaning her titties.

I was thinking about how
Two nights before
I’d been sitting on the couch with your son
While he watched Child’s Play for the
Umpteenth time in your living room

It was the scene where the mom realizes Chucky
Doesn’t need batteries

It was the scene where Chucky calls the mom
A stupid bitch,
A filthy slut.

You were in the kitchen or bathroom
I got up off the couch

It’s not, like, I’m an uptight feminist or anything
But it felt misogynistic even to me,
A seven year old boy idolizing a doll who calls women
Bitches and sluts
Before biting them, before hitting and punching them,
After killing another woman … 

But, hey, at least Miley Cyrus’s titties weren’t in the movie
For him to see.

Honeymoon in Vegas

I think it’s incredibly sexist
When ppl ask
Who paid for the plane tickets
And hotel room
The weekend we eloped
In Vegas.

Like all the jewelry store commercials
Depicting couples on holidays,
Always a man holding out a small velvet-lined box,
Always a woman smiling widely,
Her love paid for, bought:
with diamonds and gold.

I never liked diamonds, anyway.

I like fucking you
Independent of what gem stones you can afford
To buy me.

I just like fucking you, okay?
Why can’t anyone get that?

I bought all three of my wedding bands,
So fucking what.

Annulment

What if one day I’m too tired
To leave the bathroom
To eat dinner w you
And your kid

You should have thought of this
When you married a woman
Ten years your senior

With a penchant for wine and cigarettes
And fasting
In the bathroom
Door locked
La Perla gown on the floor
Ashes all around

Women my age go crazy
I told you this
I told you abt the woman I saw on the news in my youth -
“raking rabbits” on her front lawn,
The age I am now

She’d also killed her family
I think I told you that too

If I lock myself in the bathroom, sweetheart
It’s for your own protection,
Not mine

If you see me carrying in a bottle
Don’t try and stop me
I’m probably just tired
I’m always so fucking tired now
I’m just so fucking tired.



Elizabeth Ellen is the author of the poetry collections Bridget Fonda and Elizabeth Ellen, among other books.