Sealey Challenge Day 13: You Better Be Lightning

Learning Heaven

A few weeks ago, I became aware of the passing of poet Andrea Gibson by the number of Facebook homages that filled my feed. It’s where I read a few selections of their work, and thought, I should read one of their collections.

Today when I read the first poem in Andrea Gibson’s book You Better Be Lightning, I thought, why had I never heard of this poet before? Reading their bio and learning that they had spent fifteen years on tour, often filling large capacity rock clubs, that they had released seven full-length spoken word albums in collaboration with celebrated musicians, I thought:

If I’m not the last person on earth to read and appreciate Gibson’s work, it must be because I’m only competing with people who don’t read poetry. Or don’t read.

Moments I love:

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.

[…]

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.

In contrast to the collections I’ve read recently, their poems don’t hide behind technique, but still play with clichés and idioms in a way that I really admire. Gibson knows how to let the poem wander around and somehow find its way back home.

To make up for lost time,
you do not need to know why
time went missing, or what

kidnapped it, or if its face
was on the back of a milk carton
every day for fifteen years.

To make up for lost time, you need
only to put down the grudge
you are holding so you can pick up

the phone and say, How many days
did we need each other at the same time
without knowing it?

Bitterness is the easiest way
to leave this world having had only
a near-life experience.

These poems speak directly to the heart of what ails us as humans—grudges, enmity, and self-loathing. They’re filled with mantras of hope and love, despite the fact that sometimes life really sucks. They tell stories that speak to our inner teenager. What I mean by that isn’t meant to be patronizing, but to say that they speak to the person in us who is still vulnerable, and who’s trying not to be. It’s a brave book filled with love and forgiveness—which is so refreshing in contrast to many of the collections of poetry that witness pain and destruction.

This, I think, is one of the reasons Gibson’s loss is so mourned. This book, published in 2021, ends with “The Last Hours,” which culminates like a voice speaking to us from the other side, summing up all that they’ve tried to say in their work:

I would argue that none of these attempts “came up short,” that every attempt to articulate that one word has been a testament to the heaven they wanted—a heaven I believe in, too.