Jason Dean, Heathers
There’s no real match for a red
red Heather until he comes drawling softly
into town, ringing blanks through the cafeteria
of your heart. He’s the black-clad pop song
with consequences: any guy who says
some things that weren’t very nice
riddled with bullets named after the fact
that you like it when J.D. tells you secrets
that aren’t true. For example, when he
daydreams aloud about tequila and sax
on the open water at the end of the world. Fuck me gently
or however you like, breathes blue
Veronica, while yellow and green Heathers giggle.
But this guy—named for a white mask
and a red jacket—understands social tectonics. He’ll demo
cliquish tyranny right out of your life. He’ll ice
the jocks who lie about tag-teaming your poetic
mouth, the morning after you’ve left them to assault
yellow Heather alone in a meadow at midnight, post-funeral
while you get a Slushee. This guy, he’ll blow up
your life if he has to.
And he has to. It’s who he is
and this is progress: you’ll be wearing
black before you know it, to funerals and to
replace all that immutably delta blue. You already
own a monocle, so you knew this was coming. You like
pain, Veronica, or you wouldn’t be here, verily
emoting your way through lunchtime polls, scrawling
three words a page into your angry diary. Now: will it be a blue
bottle of drain cleaner with red print on a white label, or the white
carton of Carnation milk with red and blue font spelling out
which details? The color of the kitchen won’t change, and this
is another trick question. The answer is a black gun, and the backup
answer is another black gun. Ich luge means the lies we tell
ourselves are true bullets. Watch red Heather trade her red
scrunchie for a blue-toothed gasp, her final plunge
pink as Martha Dunnstock’s butterfly jacket or Betty Finn’s bag
full of childhood photographs. But Heather will leave behind a red
and blue swatch. She’d want you to have it. No shower will drown
out the drawl now. The last time J.D.
saw his mother, she waved to him from a library window
and then his father blew her up. At the end of the world,
he’ll kiss you and light a fresh cigarette
from the heat of your burning palm.
Fox Frazier-Foley is a monster made of fire. This poem is from Let Me Wring Your Heart: Love/Hate Poems for the Vulnerable Troubled Genius Boy, which interrogates literary, cultural, and cinematic tropes from 1990s US culture and is currently seeking a publisher.