Our childhoods poured into movie theaters,
shoveling snow and collecting Coke cans

for ticket money. That place used to be fun,
but I don't want to get shot now. Never

want to be a movie star after I heard about how
Dorothy was forced to smoke packs each day

to lose weight, how Norma had to uplift life
as it was known to make it how we wanted it.

They called it the silver screen for its hue,
but also because the money only trickled down

to gilded pockets. Yet those days are these,
only with less fear of others, more of our own.

All villains easy to spot with the face scar
and statements about "only for the worthy."

This poem is from a collaborative poetry project called “Stanza Trades,” in which the poets write alternating stanzas.

Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, New York, whose work has appeared widely in venues such as The Adirondack Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Fourth River, and The Heartland Review. He is Assistant Poetry Editor of Coastal Shelf, and his most recent chapbooks are Tomorrow Everyday, Yesterday Too (Anxiety Press, 2022), A Little Smaller Than the Final Quark (Bullshit Lit, 2022), and Hate, Love, Hate, (Back Room Poetry, 2022).

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. His writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Meridian, Rattle, The Southern Review, Fence, Texas Review, and Atlanta Review among others. He also publishes the writing prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the literary journal Coastal Shelf.