Poetry by Marianne Worthington

Edna Winti CC



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Elvis Has Left the Building

            for Julie

That day in your car, the day that Elvis died,
I was trying to tell you something
so important but we had the radio on,

turned low, but loud enough to hear the king
had died. On the toilet. Trying to take a shit, 
we learned later. We couldn’t wait for the drama 

from our mothers, for the hysteria, the conspiracy 
theories. What I wanted to tell you on that day
was that I chose a sorry spouse and I was hunting

a way out of a stupid marriage where only one 
of us kept a job and the house running. I wanted you 
to know before our parents knew, before 

our grandmother knew and started her harangue 
of no, no, no! But Elvis stole the show. I drove 
past the house where I lived in that sad marriage

years later, and it was gone. The little tract
house with the creek dribbling through the back
yard—vanished like a conjurer waved their hands 

and erased the footprint of my story. When something 
disappears like that, does it mean it never happened? 
I swear when you died I was not through

with needing you. But gone you were, so fast,
and I’m left yearning for your return. Daily. 
Trying to make it all mean something.

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Marianne Worthington is author of The Girl Singer (UP of KY 2021), winner of the Weatherford Prize for Poetry, and Water.Witness.Word forthcoming in 2026 from Belle Point Press. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, CALYX, and Southern Humanities Review, among other places. She co-founded Still: The Journal, an online literary magazine that published writers, artists, and musicians with ties to Appalachia (2009-2024). She lives, writes, and teaches in southeastern Kentucky.



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