Two Poems by Elizabeth Vines

Trigger Warning

Ever since trigger warnings became a thing,
I’ve been finding it hard to know what shouldn’t
be included in a trigger warning.
A honda civic, especially if it’s
green and sparkling.
Boots that crash into the floor,
the very sound of anger incarnate.
A certain back room in a laundromat
with a table for tarot.
I think of three women I used to live with.
Strong women. Smart women.
Satin, shiny, reflective.
Too tight ballet shoes.
Red, the color, seeing it.
Whiskey, the smell, the burn.
I think of my cousin and my mother and my aunt,
Women bound — and bound together.
The concepts of “lucky”
and “close call.”
The shoes I left at his house.
My missing bike light — or was it stolen?
The rear naked chokes I practice in Jiu-Jitsu.
I think of how many “almosts”
and “grey areas” there must be
sitting on top of my already present trauma —
here since childhood.
The owners of these triggers are beautiful people, wonderful people,
to use the triggering words of
a man we would all like to forget.
I prefer to think of us
as caretakers of our triggers.
The kind of caretaker you might find
on a quiet farm in Northern Ireland.
Each morning he carries a lantern to visit his goats,
softly humming their names.

*

everyone wants a poem about Pedro Pascal today

everyone wants a poem about Pedro Pascal today
because maybe, just maybe,
he gets it.
maybe if we saw Pedro in a cafe in rome,
we would spill our coffee because
we would be moving our hands too fast
to cover the gaping hole of our mouths.
maybe by the time we could step back into our bodies,
he would already be on his hands and knees,
mopping up the mess of our enthusiasm,
telling us
“it’s okay. everything is okay.”
maybe his jawline is etched with kindness.
and maybe when he tells us “everything is okay,”
the deeper meaning of these words
coats us like a blanket that
heals our trauma in a deeply somatic way.
maybe if we were to have sex with him,
it would be the kind of sex where we cry at the end,
and he would cry with us and tell us
what a beautiful thing it is to cry while existing in the world.
maybe when he uses his privilege to support
his sister, he is lifting up every one of us.
maybe his muscles move beyond gender.
maybe we want to deify him because it’s alluring to think
it could be safe to let our love transcend everything.
maybe we crave religion.
maybe he is the patriarchy’s apology — their aphrodite —
proving apodictically that compassion can reside within
the body of a cis-het man.

*

Elizabeth Vines is an emerging poet, as well as a painter and psychotherapist living in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. Her poetry explores identity, philosophy, emotional excavation, and power dynamics. This is her first publication.