Elevator Pitch


You are in one of the ones built to sway. When there was a fire,
the elevators used to return automatically to the first floor.

Not today. In case of fire, you have been taught: Take the stairs,
always take the stairs, but now they tell you you must not strike out

on your own, you must listen to what you do not want to heed— 
Forget the one thing you thought you knew when everything

started to burn. The smoke is fading out the hallway, you hear
scraps of them yelling, their feet knocking on the floor. You hear,

Get in the elevator. Because you want to live and because
you have been trained to listen, you listen. You are obedient. You go

against instinct. You go in. You let the doors close around you.
You move down, through, and past the emergency.

The doors open. You are clear. You have now,
and time to think about it. 

​

KC Trommer, author of The Hasp Tongue (dancing girl press, 2014), is a graduate of the MFA program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has won an Academy of American Poets Prize, and her poem, "Fear Not, Mary," won the 2015 Fugue Poetry Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.