FreezeRay:  Poetry With A Pop
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ELLYN TOUCHETTE

If you asked a five year old me what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would’ve said

PADME  MOTHERFUCKING AMIDALA.

Queen Amidala does not give a  SHIT.
Not about acting like a lady, not about listening 
to Jedi, not about the Trade Federation
and their goddamned  treaty.

The only things Padme Amidala cares about 
are diplomacy and high got­damn fashion.

I was Queen Amidala for Halloween in 1999. 
Price­wise, my costume was about on par 
with a small motorcycle, but my glorious geek 
of a father cared more about  parading
his tiny homemade nets around the  cul­de­sac
than he did about Christmas presents or, like, dinner.

My dad did my Halloween makeup that year 
and it looked AWESOME. He told  me
the red stripe on Queen Amidala’s lip stood 
for the suffering she’d endure for her people. 
I remember thinking that the kind of ruler 
who paints her loyalty on her face in blood
is the kind of woman I wanted to grow up to be.

When Episode One debuted, I was  five.
My dad let me believe that Queen Amidala 
was the main character for as long as it  took
me to realize the most respected political figure 
in the galaxy, was a supporting  character
for all one hundred and thirty three minutes of disaster 
that was The Phantom  Menace.

George Lucas, the real menace, had at his pudgy  fingertips
the chance to give us one of the most compelling female characters 
mainstream science fiction had yet  seen.

And he robbed us of her. At no point is it revealed 
how Padme was elected  democratically
to lead an entire planet at fourteen, an age when most girls 
can’t maintain diplomacy with their  hormones.
 
We don’t get a lick of what is undoubtedly 
the coolest backstory pretty much  ever.

Instead, we get two dudes in a submarine dodging leviathans. 
We get forty­-five minutes of dudes pod  racing.
We get a whiny nine year old dude with 
SO MANY MIDICHLORIANS.

No one wanted to be a young Anakin Skywalker for Halloween.
I went as a brilliant, capable, and powerful diplomat 
who spent one hundred and thirty­-three  minutes
taking orders from men, but I felt powerful for the first time 
in my short life.

Now, as I recall, although every door opened 
for me that night, as I reached for each bowl 
of my well­-earned reward,
each towering adult told my father 
how cute I looked in my  dress.


Ellyn Touchette is an incorrigible Star Wars devotee from Portland, Maine. Her short pseudophilosophical manifesto The Book of Gene  is forthcoming from Freezeray Press in 2015, & her first full-length collection of poetry, The Great Right-Here, is forthcoming in 2016 from University of Hell Press. Some of her most recent work is present or forthcoming in decomP, NAILED, Words Dance, & other. 
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