Book 41 for 2026: You Better Be Lightning

You Better Be Lightning, by Andrea Gibson.

Andrea Gibson's poems talk with vulnerability about love and social justice, and sometimes the clash between the two. In "What Love Is," she describes a performance where she was supposed to announce an anti-fracking event. But her girlfriend's parents had unexpectedly shown up, and fracking was the reason the girlfriend's father had a job. In the end, Gibson didn't make the announcement.

There is no moral of the story. It's just a moment in my life where I did something wrong, and the earth, who has never not known what love is, held me anyway.

Sometimes it feels like she's trying to fit several poems into one. "Time Piece" contains a wide array of thoughts about time and mortality:

My friend wakes up at noon.
Goes to bed at eight. Wants less time
because she wants less pain.


I understand. I've been there too.
I can spot a scar beneath a wristwatch
from a hundred yards away.

...

No matter how it looks,
you and everyone you know
have hourglass figures.
Each breath, a falling
grain of sand.

In "The Call, Option 1," she describes tracking down the phone number of the man who groomed and sexually abused her at age thirteen, and she contemplates what to say.

I'll tell him karma is a hell

of a feminist.
I'll tell him my silence
was his worst bet.

I'll tell him I'm watching him
through the bullet hole
he left in my childhood

...

I could make his address
the title of my next book,
and yes, I think he asked for it.

This is followed by "The Call, Option 2:"

There is a world in which you did not touch me.
A world in which you thought about touching me
and were so nightmared by your own mind
you climbed inside your skull and bloodied your knees

crawling across the tundra of your history,
turning over every rock to chase out every worm
that might trick you into believing anything
could be cut in half and keep living.

....

Can you see it?
I know you can. Everyone can
see who they were supposed to be.

Trigger warnings for sexual abuse, self-harm and suicide.

This Challenge Killed The Bookworm: The great English pastime of commenting on the weather.

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