This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Never Picked First for Playtime by Dustin Brookshire (Small Harbor Publishing 2023).
Pandemic Barbie
after Denise Duhamel’s “Antichrist Barbie”
She sits inside her Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse—
a socialite waiting on her assistant.
Her body yearns to be dressed
by little girls, but especially those little boys
who bring the glitz and glamour.
Mothers debate—let the dolls sit for 2 to 3 days
post play date or wipe them down with Lysol.
Barbie doesn’t have COVID, cry little girls,
and little boys, who in secret, love her.
The boys grow up to cinch their waists,
sissy their walk, balk at lace front wigs,
leave families behind, free their inner Barbie,
grow up to be men thankful
one blue pill a day prevents at least one virus.
Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) fourth chapbook, Repeat As Needed, is forthcoming from Harbor Editions in May 2025. A recipient of the 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship awarded by Poetry at the Sea, his work has been published or is forthcoming in the Best American Poetry Blog, Pleiades, Five Points, Cherry Tree, South Florida Poetry Journal, TAB, Whale Road Review, and other journals. He’s the editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Anthologies, 2024) and the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). Dustin curates and hosts the Wild & Precious Life Series. He lives in Asheville with his partner and cat Jude Paw. More at dustinbrookshire.com. 
john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is melancholy arcadia published with Harbor Editions (april 2024).
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