You Better Be Lightning

PRAISE FOR ANDREA GIBSON

“Andrea Gibson’s work looks likes poetry, and sounds like poetry, but feels like something much larger, more expansive.”

—Posture

“Gibson’s poems are forthright and pithy, putting into words the feelings of anyone who has been angry, or outraged, or embarrassed, or in love.”

—Star Tribune

“Andrea Gibson’s work shows up to your door without any pretension. It gives, pushes, and asks, knowing that even its beauty cannot answer it all. Each poem is a small fire signaling home, and home happens to be ourselves. Gibson has generously given us a blissful surrender to the immensity known as love.”

—Yesika Salgado, author of Corazón

“With such tenderness and empathy and humor, Andrea Gibson’s You Better Be Lightning does such important dreaming work, visioning work, looking work, in this stunning collection of generous poems. Of these poems’ infinite superpowers, my favorite might be their use of anecdotes as a sort of beckoning, welcoming a reader into this book’s lush ecosystem of intimacy. Read these poems and feel held, welcomed, forgiven.”

— Safia Elhillo, author of The January Children

“Andrea Gibson is in the fight for hearts and minds. with a relentless sense of urgency and emotions—‘having feelings all over’—leavened by an occasional flash of humor.”

—Boston Globe

“Gibson captures raw human experiences and emotions—both good and bad and turns them into something optimistic and hopeful, reminding their audience of the power in vulnerability and in living.”

—Out Front Magazine

“Andrea Gibson’s poems are an active volcano—they burn away and rebirth—a creation story in every line.”

—Sonya Renee Taylor, author of
The Body Is Not An Apology

YOU BETTER BE

LIGHTNING

YOU BETTER BE

LIGHTNING

Andrea Gibson

© 2021 by Andrea Gibson

Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover design: Amy Law

ISBN 978-1-943735-99-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63834-016-4

A Note on Poetry E-Books

You are reading a poetry e-book, which, based on the settings of your device, can result in significant changes to the original formatting as intended by the author and publisher. For the best experience reading this book, please set your device so that the following line fits entirely on one line on your screen.

the beginning might actually be when our hearts have perfect vision.

For Manny—

when I’m riding on the handlebars

out of the pitch dark, your light

is pedaling.

Contents

Acceptance Speech after Setting the World Record in Goosebumps

The Year of No Grudges, or Instead of Writing a Furious Text, I Try a Poem

The Museum of Broken Relationships

Time Piece

Queer Youth Are Five Times More Likely to Die by Suicide

No Such Thing as the Innocent Bystander

To Whom It Definitely Concerns,

Every Time I Ever Said I Want to Die

Instead of Depression

What Love Is

Homesick: a Plea for Our Planet

The Day Prince Died

My Gender Is the Undoing of Gender

Spelling Bee Without Stinger

The Night Shift

Love Me to Life

Love Letter to the Tick that Got Me Sick

After the Break-Up, Our Tandem Bike Speaks:

Neighbors

Note to the Stranger Six Feet Away:

Good Grief

The Call, Option 1

The Call, Option 2

What Can’t Be Taken

The Test of Time

Aliens Explain Why They Are Visiting Earth

Constellations Rearrange Themselves into a Protest Sign

Climate Change

Wellness Check

My Girlfriend’s Karaoke Song

What You Wish You’d Said to the High School Guidance Counselor

What Sucks About the Afterlife

How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best

Life Sentence

Not Alone

How I Became a Poet

See This Through

The Last Hours

Acknowledgements

About the Author

YOU BETTER BE

LIGHTNING

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AFTER SETTING THE WORLD RECORD IN GOOSEBUMPS

I wasn’t, by any means, a natural.

Was not one of those wow-hounds

born jaw-dropped. I was tough in the husk.

Went years untouched by rain. Took shelter

seriously, even and often especially

in good weather, my tears like teenagers

hiding under the hoods of my eyes,

so committed they were to never falling

for the joke of astonishment.

When I was told there were seven

wonders of the world, I trusted the math,

believed I had seen none of them.

Of course beauty hunted me.

It hunts everyone. But I outran it, hid

in worry, regret, the promise of an afterlife

or a week’s end.

Then one day, in a red velvet theater

in New Orleans, I watched Maya Angelou

walk on stage. Seventeen slow steps to the mic.

She took a breath before speaking,

and I could hear god being born in that breath.

My every pore reached out like a hand

pointing to the first unsinkable lotus in the bayou

of the universe. I’d never felt anything like it.

Searched the encyclopedia for the feeling’s name

when I got home: “Goosebumps.”

Afterward, I thought—I can do this.

Started training morning to night,

crowbar swinging like a pendulum at the wall

of my chest. Tore the caution tape off

my life and let everything touch it:

Allen Iverson on the television in his first season

with the Sixers, crossover sharp as a V of sparrows

flying through the paint like Michelangelo’s brush:

333 goosebumps.

My baby sister, sober for the first time

in thirteen years, calling to tell me she just noticed

our mother’s eyes are green:

505 goosebumps.

One day, my friend scored tickets

to a Prince concert. Tiny venue. I was right

behind the sound booth. Prince’s entire band

that evening—women. At the end of the show,

the sound person turned around and whispered,

He didn’t play one song on his setlist the whole night.

I live on stages. I know what it is to scratch a plan

but not the whole trip and still arrive to your destination

two hundred years before your time:

421 (artists formerly known as) goosebumps.

But that’s just the fancy stuff.

Some of them came from simple facts—

it rains diamonds on Jupiter:

189 goosebumps.

Blood donors in Sweden receive

a thank-you message when their blood is used:

301 Nordic goosebumps.

One night in Ann Arbor, my friend,

still undiagnosed, could not uncurl her fingers

to strum her guitar, so she sang the chords instead.

It was the first time in my life I’d seen pain

become an instrument:

10 dozen goosebumps

for each and every note plucked

from the string section of her refusal to silence

her dream. After that, nothing in the world was gray.

Even the movie of my past was released in color.

The oldest man in my hometown could not

get to the door to listen to our carols,

so we went inside and sang at his bedside instead.

Twenty-four boots on the front step

catching snowflakes with their tongues:

776 goosebumps.

At one point everything started doing it:

A sincere apology: 221 goosebumps.

An enemy’s love poem: 222 goosebumps.

The moon rising over the continental divide.

My girlfriend and I thought it was a car

driving off a cliff, and suddenly nothing

in the world was dying. You ever felt that?

A split second when nothing in the world is dying?

888 goosebumps,

and the next day I sharpened a tiny ax

so I could split the seconds myself.

Too much lives in a moment

to not feed it to the fire in the heart, slow.

A Missoula treehouse filled with candlelight:

143 goosebumps.

The octopus documentary:

54 goosebumps, multiplied by 8.

The biggest dog in the shelter

hiding behind a teacup chihuahua,

and the woman who came to adopt a cat

taking all three of them home:

1,012 goosebumps.

There is no escaping the magic now.

Beauty caught me and never let me go.

And the thing about the world record

is—if someone breaks it after me,

and they will break it after me,

I will love that so much

that without even trying,

I’ll break it again.

THE YEAR OF NO GRUDGES, OR
INSTEAD OF WRITING A FURIOUS TEXT, I TRY A POEM

I know most people try hard

to do good and find out too late

they should have tried softer.

I’ve never in my whole life

been levelheaded, but the older I get,

I’m more level-hearted—

and I think we make gods

who look like us for a reason.

I think, in spite of it all, we trust

we can be believed in.

When I don’t believe in myself,

I try to remember I have walked

on water, like, seven-hundred times

in Maine in the dead of winter.

Where I come from, you can drive

a pickup truck from one side

of the lake to the other, and people

have an unusually high quantity

of missing teeth and fingers,

but you can still count on them

to buy whitening strips and wedding rings

because where I come from

beauty is in the eye of anyone who sees

what’s missing but can’t stop pointing

to what’s still there.

If there’s no definition for love yet—

I think that’s a good one.

I’m writing you, Friend, on a day

you did me wrong. I’m only half

a second outside the furnace of my rage,

and I’m trying to focus

my attention on all the teeth

you still have, the teeth

I know you’d happily knock out

yourself if it would keep you

from biting anyone again.

That’s how mistakes work

if you’re loving the right kind of people.

And you’re the right kind of people.

You’ve walked on water

so many times you know grace

is super, super slippery.

There’s literally nothing

anyone is more likely

to fall from.

Some sound advice I give myself,

like, twice an hour: Wear knee pads

on the way to your ego, Andrea.

Being right is boring.

It comforts only the tiniest

parts of us, and when it comes to hearts,

I want to always be a size queen

’cause that’s how I found you—

lifting the spirits of everyone around

like a hot air balloon

just from the way you burned

to be a better person today

than you were the day before.

Burning to be better is my favorite

quality on anyone, and you are on fire

like a gay men’s choir

rocking the halftime show

of a football game.

I’ve been dancing in the end zone

since you taught me to start breaking

every promise I have made

to my pain, taught me my wounds

will never be bigger than I am.

Thank goodness for you,

champion of the unkillable YES,

dandelion refusing to be cut

for the bouquet.

Five minutes into our first conversation

you knew I could take a punch

better than I could take a compliment

and you talked to me about it only once

and BAM! I was angel gossip.

There were god-rumors spreading

in my suddenly un-heavied head.

I love you because you’ve never had a mirror

face. Because the truth is the last thing

you would ever try to fake.

So sometimes you look like a human

scribble, like a two-year-old

has colored you in,

like you have too many feelings

to stay inside the lines

of your own skin. But that, my friend,

is the masterpiece. I love you

because we have both showed up

to kindness tryouts

with notes from the school nurse

that said we were too hurt to participate.

But we learned how wrong we were,

and weren’t those the best days?

The days we learned how wrong we were

and so got to grow

into our goodness, throwing

the peach pits of our old selves

into the garden to grow sweetness.

Sugar, I pick you to be the captain

of my chosen family tree.

I pick you to throw the party

when I leave this world

knowing I’m gonna run death

like a stop sign

and keep going.

I pick you to finish

all my half-written poems

even though you suck

at writing poetry.

I pick you to finish this one

especially, which is basically

just a list of compliments

you’d be a hypocrite not to take,

so take it before I remember:

I’m mad at you, Asshole,

Butt Knuckle, Nutwad,

only human on Earth

who knows exactly what I mean

when I say god—I mean everyone

down here who understands why

when I get to heaven,

I will refuse to call it heaven

if the people I love

(who put me through hell)

aren’t there.

THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS

In Croatia, in 2006, Olinka and Drazen broke up.

Having no idea what to do with the relics

from the four years of their love, they created

the Museum of Broken Relationships.

For years now they’ve been collecting items

from the broken-hearted all over the world.

Each day, treasures arrive at the museum’s door:

a small bottle of a lover’s tears.

The last checkbook with both partners’ names.

A shiny watch with the pin pulled out

the second he said I love you for the first time.

In the Museum of Broken Relationships

there is a toaster. Beside it, a note:

When I moved across the country

I took the toaster. That will show you.

How are you going to toast anything now?

In another display there is a cell phone.

Written beside it, the words: He gave me

his own cell phone so I couldn’t

call him anymore.

There is a letter T from a keyboard

from a couple whose online passion died

after their first real-life encounter.

The keyboard taken apart in a commitment

to never again trust a computer key

to open one’s heart. In the Museum

of Broken Relationships, you can find a letter

from a thirteen-year-old boy to his first love in Sarajevo

written before leaving to escape the war.

You can find an air sickness bag

from a couple whose relationship did not survive

the turbulence of long distance.

You can find an ax used to chop the furniture

of a partner who had an affair, giving new

traumatic meaning to the phrase

splitting up.

There is a jar of Love Incense

with a note that says, It simply

doesn’t work. There is a display case

with a pair of papier-mache breasts

gifted by a woman whose husband

insisted she wear them during sex:

They were bigger than mine, she said.

They turned him on, and I left.

And in the Museum of Broken

Relationships in Croatia, there are three

juggling balls sewn by hand,

by my hands, from material

cut from my socks, you say,

though I am certain

it was my underwear.

Either way, the juggling balls

were made from what I wore

underneath what everyone could see

and sewn with precision

the way my grandma taught me

before dying of a broken heart

and leaving me a collection of thimbles

so I could be someone