“Thelma and Louise” Alternate Ending
…………………………………. for Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis
No driving off the cliff into blue sky.
Instead, you pocket the ignition key,
surrender to a system that will try
you fairly, understanding fully why
you shot a rapist, why you had to flee
and drive off in a panic, warm night sky
embracing, sheltering. You testify,
the courtroom still but steeped in empathy.
Surrender to our system. Wise allies
will counsel you, lend hands and minds, untie
hard knots of fear and guilt, and therapy
will feel like driving into vast blue sky
yet bind you to our earth. Your bright, new life:
belonging to a sisterhood of Me
Too and surrendering the search for why
it happened on your fishing trip. Mourn. Cry.
But hold fast to your ingenuity.
No driving off the cliff into blue sky.
Surrender. Craft new systems. Do not die.
……
This poem is from the chapbook Climbing the Fire Escape, Flipping the Raft: Poems on Women in Movies by Kathleen McClung (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/climbing-the-fire-escape-flipping-the-raft-poems-on-women-in-movies-by-kathleen-mcclung/
Kathleen McClung is the author of five poetry collections: Questions of Buoyancy, A Juror Must Fold in on Herself, winner of the 2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize, Temporary Kin, The Typists Play Monopoly and Almost the Rowboat. She co-authored with Mary Kennedy Eastham and Eileen Malone Three Soul-Makers: Poems That Bring Us Together. Winner of the Morton Marr, Maria W. Faust, and Rita Dove national poetry prizes, her work appears in a variety of journals and anthologies. A 2024 finalist for San Francisco Poet Laureate, she served from 2021-23 as guest editor for The MacGuffin, a print literary journal based in Michigan. She also served as associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition and judged the contest’s sonnet category. In 2018-2019 she was a writer-in-residence at Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Kathleen teaches literature and writing classes at Skyline College in San Bruno and directed the Women on Writing conference there for ten years. She also teaches privately and at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) in San Francisco. Visit her website at www.kathleenmcclung.com
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