Kieran Collier
Bruce Willis in Ten Parts
1. A friend once told me my father
is Bruce Willis.
2. He is not.
3. But they’re both bald. Both
look the same in blurry photos.
4. I tell this to girls
in order to impress them.
5. This does not work. They tell me
Ben Affleck or Paul Rudd would
have been cooler.
6. I wonder how Bruce Willis
feels about that.
7. I wonder how my father
feels about that.
8. I have never seen Bruce Willis
and my father in the same place
at the same time. Operating
off of this observation, one can only conclude
that my father is in fact, Bruce Willis.
9. When you’re a kid, you want to believe
your father is a superhero, like Unbreakable.
That he can single handedly save the world,
like Armageddon. Pulp Fiction—He can box
like a champion. Die Hard—He can save
an entire building, and his marriage.
The Sixth Sense—He can help any child in need.
10. My father is not an action hero or an actor
or even a man with a similar physical build,
but sometimes in blurry photos
you can barely tell the difference.
Kieran Collier represented Emerson College at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational 2013 where he was featured in their Semi-Finals Showcase. He is also a curator of the Emerson Poetry Project, Emerson College’s only spoken word organization. His work has been published in The Legendary, Concrete Literary Magazine, Gauge Magazine, and Walking Is Still Honest Press. He is also the assistant poetry editor for and a staff writer at The Catharsis, an online literary magazine. He has strong feelings about the color orange.
Bruce Willis in Ten Parts
1. A friend once told me my father
is Bruce Willis.
2. He is not.
3. But they’re both bald. Both
look the same in blurry photos.
4. I tell this to girls
in order to impress them.
5. This does not work. They tell me
Ben Affleck or Paul Rudd would
have been cooler.
6. I wonder how Bruce Willis
feels about that.
7. I wonder how my father
feels about that.
8. I have never seen Bruce Willis
and my father in the same place
at the same time. Operating
off of this observation, one can only conclude
that my father is in fact, Bruce Willis.
9. When you’re a kid, you want to believe
your father is a superhero, like Unbreakable.
That he can single handedly save the world,
like Armageddon. Pulp Fiction—He can box
like a champion. Die Hard—He can save
an entire building, and his marriage.
The Sixth Sense—He can help any child in need.
10. My father is not an action hero or an actor
or even a man with a similar physical build,
but sometimes in blurry photos
you can barely tell the difference.
Kieran Collier represented Emerson College at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational 2013 where he was featured in their Semi-Finals Showcase. He is also a curator of the Emerson Poetry Project, Emerson College’s only spoken word organization. His work has been published in The Legendary, Concrete Literary Magazine, Gauge Magazine, and Walking Is Still Honest Press. He is also the assistant poetry editor for and a staff writer at The Catharsis, an online literary magazine. He has strong feelings about the color orange.
