TIM UPPERTON

 

When we watched movies

 
I want to watch one bad movie 
after another, and when I’ve seen them all 
I will read all the bad books, the bad, rubbishy 
books with their stock characters and ridiculous plots, 
and then I will listen to Europop— 
no, country music, I’ll listen to Europop and country music 
and the entire back-catalogue of Celine Dion while I eat 
triple cheeseburgers, grease running down my chin. 
I want to grow fat and to start smoking. 
I want to stub out my cigarette in a fried egg, 
I want to live in that Hitchcock movie, 
which isn’t a bad movie at all, but more like the ones 
we watched when we watched movies, 
not art-house exactly, but VistaVision kitsch— 
how we loved the beautiful actors, their quick, 
brittle voices, their antique brio. We grasped 
their warm hands. The room filled with snow. 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Upperton’s poems have been published in Agni (USA), Bravado, Landfall, NZ Books, NZ Listener, North and South, Reconfigurations (USA), Sport, Takahe, and Turbine. His first collection, A House on Fire (Steele-Roberts) was published in 2009. His poems have also appeared in the annual series, Best New Zealand Poems (2008 and 2009), and The Best of Best New Zealand Poems (VUP, 2011).

 

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