Poetry: “jeopardy people” by Michelle Moroses
Michelle Moroses makes a powerful statement in her poem, “jeopardy people,” when she writes, “the ugliness will not stay inside of you forever. eventually it is going to let itself out…” This kind of statement likely resonates with many people, but it feels particularly relevant because Moroses uses Alex Trebek and the television show Jeopardy! as an entry point to speak about her emotions at large. Weaving emotions, particularly fear of change and coming-of-age, deftly between the threads of this well-established and much-loved program, Moroses gives us a poem to remember as we all try to find a language to describe what it feels like to grow, and grow up.
jeopardy people
i am folding laundry on the couch in the living room when Alex Trebek turns his head directly
towards the camera and says
towards the camera and says
the ugliness will not stay inside of you forever. eventually, it is going to let itself out of the bone
cage of your lower ribs and flap its way out into the world.
and i took that to my heart. sewed it into the lining of my turtleneck. and i asked Alex for
headache cures for 500, but he didn’t hear me.
sometimes i wish the world would end tomorrow.
it would feel like when they cancel class, but you weren’t planning on going anyway.
if the world did end tomorrow, i think Alex Trebek would still be there on the television in the
living room, asking for the name of which saltwater algae can grow up to 200 feet in length just
as the sawdust rains down and the ceiling finally caves in and
maybe then i would wake from the dead to yell at the screen, kelp.
i could spend forever wandering the halls of the useless knowledge museum,
turning over rocks and rhinoceroses and dead American politicians and thinking huh,
that constellation looks like it could become a home.
that’s when the kettle whistles, and i remember as the scalding water touches my frosty hands
that i am not trying to die,
that i am not trying to die,
not yet, at least, not for a long while.
i ask Alex Trebek when it all stops feeling like the last long dregs of a rotten family curse for 300
and he says,
what is any day now?
Michelle Moroses
Michelle Moroses is a poet and writer from the Jersey Shore. She has worked at Ploughshares and The Emerson Review and has been published online at Poets Reading the News, The Penn Review, Anti-Heroin Chic and more.
