When I was five, I got a dog. He was a lab puppy, the only white lab in his litter, with attachment issues and anxiety and a fierce hatred of men in glasses (and also of random strangers). He was the most messed-up pet I have ever had, and he gave me the most unconditional love I have ever experienced. He passed away two and a half years ago, at age 11, and even though I'd known it was coming, I was devastated.
All this is to say that when I went to see Andrea Gibson perform last week, I expected that it would be the poem about abuse, or the poem about catcalling, or the poem about self-love that would make me emotional. But it was the dog poem that got me.
It speaks to my privilege, maybe, that the poem that made me cry the most was also the least serious, or at least the one with the most tangental relationship to heartbreak. But you never really know what's going to make you feel something. And that's what I like the most about Andrea Gibson: everything they do makes you feel something.
Andrea Gibson is a queer slam poet who lives and works in Colorado. Their work covers everything from spirituality to gardening to doggy onesies, but many of their poems represent stories of queer love and its intersections with gender, class, white privilege and politics (to name just a few).
When I saw them on Mar. 8, I was already feeling pretty emotional. It was my one year anniversary with my partner, and I was seeing a friend who I hadn't seen in two months, and it was raining, and I'd eaten a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. So when Andrea came on stage, I wasn't in the most focused of moods. But as soon as I heard the first poem, I was enthralled for the rest of the night.
In the words of Buddy Wakefield, “Andrea Gibson does not just show up to pluck your heart strings. They stick around to tune them. If being floored is new to you, ya might want to grab a cushion. Whatever the opposite of fooling someone is, Andrea does that. Beware of the highway in their grace and the crowbar in their verse.”
And so much of that verse, it turns out, deals with history. Personal, private, political, huge, tiny, hurtful, good. It's the sort of history that asks questions: What do you feel? Why don't you feel? How can you love again, when you still have that tandem bicycle in your garage that you're unwilling to sell?
It's the kind of truth-telling I wish I'd heard in middle school, the kind that I'm overwhelmingly glad I've heard now. If you're in SoCal this week, or on the East Coast the next, check out their list of shows and see if you can make one.
