John Andrews
Manic Pixie Dream Gay
Oh Natalie Portman, I too have put headphones on a boy
made him listen to the chorus over and over and
explain the intricacy of how he was just as beautiful. We
weren’t in The Garden State but if you name me a species of tree
on a college campus, I’ve spread a Mexican blanket
under it and demanded a picnic. I held so many hands,
screamed off the edge of more cliffs than I can count.
No, Kate Hudson, I wasn’t naive enough to think fame
was my way in but I hung my paintings, three if not more,
on enough apartment walls that I am an expert in Command
strips and balancing on step stools, that weren’t meant to be step stools.
Drug so many to whatever body of water was closest, and took drugs
I didn’t want to, just to make him imagine that we were two fish, slow
dance to a song I proclaimed ours. Always a little country, always a duet.
You get it, Kirsten Dunst. We’ve both flown east just to visit
an Elizabethtown to hold a man who was all up in his feelings,
discount his hotel and make sure he tries a hot brown.
How many dents have you left in cars chasing a guy
down a street on a scooter just trying to get him to chase you back?
I wanted him to sing “Chasing After You” with me that night so bad.
But we don’t get the duet in the end, do we, girls?
I just end up sitting in a wheat field alone at the end of summer after
the excitement wears off. It’s never about us, he always gets to be the one
chased after with headphones and pixie dust and attention. I am all he needs
for that point in his story. All we do is find the right song,
the right record, drop the needle with a coy
scratch we think he’ll find cute enough to want to dance,
hope he makes us the main character.
John Andrews is the author of Colin Is Changing His Name (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). His work has appeared in Redivider, Ninth Letter, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he is a teaching assistant professor in the Honors College at Oklahoma State University.