Super Mario/Duck Hunt
by Luisa Muradyan
When they brought the Nintendo home, I finally understood
the sublime. What the romantics must have felt
standing on the edge of a mountain
as nature gently exhaled in their faces. A holy reminder
that you were put on this earth to do more
than turn the wheel of productivity. And perhaps
not everyone is meant to understand beauty
or art, like those who criticized the rectangular
shape of Nintendo’s body or noted that the gray
with gray color palette evoked the dilapidated
carpet at a DMV, but like any artist in love,
let me paint a different picture. This gray
is the chain link fence that wraps
around your heart. Open it
and you will find me sitting next to my father
as he plugs the controllers in and waits for the TV
to transform. This wasn’t a gaming console for me
or even for you, but for my father and his brother,
one of whom is no longer on this earth.
This memory isn’t about childhood wonder but about the brothers
on the screen. How naturally my father was Luigi, and his brother was Mario,
because he was the taller one, and his brother was the better plumber,
having just spent the day unclogging toilets in a corporate building
where employees would be in such a rush to return to their desks that they would
forget to flush, knowing that there was always someone out there
to save them. It was how my mother was never the Princess
because she was not the one who needed to be rescued, though
she did escape from a country that punished its dissidents, those
who refused to lick the boot of the Koopas. Would you believe me
if I told you that country no longer existed? Though the fear
still hung in the sky like an unbroken pile of bricks. The image of men
falling into hot lava, or reptiles spitting fireballs, was gentler
than the real wilderness where relatives disappeared
to places where the wolves were never pixelated,
who waited hungrily with open mouths. When we found the gun
in the box, we almost panicked. A bonus item we did not anticipate.
A lesson from our new country, where death comes with a soundtrack,
and anything can be purchased with enough coins.
A game we all must learn how to play. So steady your hands and
hold the barrel up towards the screen. Take your best shot.
Hear how the dog laughs as bodies
fall from the sky.
Luisa Muradyan, PhD, is the author of three poetry collections: When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated (SMU Bridwell Press, 2025), and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She is the recipient of the 2026 Jack Hazard Fellowship, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and recently, I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated was named a 2026 Kansas Notable book. Her poems have appeared in the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, The Sun, and The Missouri Review, among others. Despite controversy, she is known for putting pineapple on her pizza.
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