Back to the Future (1985)
a poem about high stakes
Back to the Future (1985)
In 1955, everyone thinks Marty McFly
is wearing a life jacket, and they’re not wrong:
if he fails to make his parents fall in love,
he’ll never learn to swim. I had forgotten
the Oedipal plot, Marty psyching himself up
to get handsy with Mom so his dad can come
rescue the future, but it’s Biff, that dick
who won’t take no for an answer,
who opens the car door, easily cleaving
the story into its villains and heroes,
the men who use violence against women
and the men who use violence to stop
those men. O gods were it possible
for me to rewatch this movie like a man
and take a nostalgic drug trip on the wings
of a theme song, instead of filtering
everything I see through my lived experience
as Lorraine, topping off the vodka in her glass.
How much did she drink the night Marty
spent a week in her adolescence
trying to put his body in the path of lightning—
Doc says that’s the only way to get back
to the future, the life you took for granted
before time became such a high stakes game.
Poet-in-Residence is a newsletter of poems about pop culture and the internet by Leigh Stein, the "poet laureate of The Bachelor." New poem every Tuesday and Thursday. Tell yr friends.
If you’re a writer, you might be interested in the panel on writing and publishing memoir I’m doing tonight (online).