Love Poem to Paul Rudd
I know I love you, man. How you can be the stepbrother or the nice guy, the fool or the womanizer, and I buy it every single time. I want you to know Paul, you inspire me. I want to bring the spirit of your boyish charms to the line, to the poem, to the page. Your over exaggerated facial expressions and body movements. I’ll never be able to understand how you haven’t aged in fifteen years. The last time we were together, you were slappin da bass, speaking in your Reggae accent, but you sounded like a leprechaun, and I didn’t want it any other way. I bet you really do play the bass and listen to Rush. I bet you are out there now, somewhere, planting butterflies into the heads of strangers, reciting soliloquies in nothing but a hot tub. Promise me you’ll be the heartthrob that would rather be funny. Promise me your self-awareness and Colgate smile. Promise me my laughter. Paul, promise that we’ll never ever grow up.
anhvu buchanan
iPOEM
Anhvu Buchanan is the author of The Disordered out July 9th, 2013 with Sunnyoutside Press and Backhanded Compliments & Other Ways to Say I Love You (Works on Paper Press 2013). He is the recipient of the 2010 James D. Phelan Award and also received an Individual Artists Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. His poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Cream City Review, The Journal, Vinyl Poetry, and ZYZZYVA. He currently is a Teaching Artist for WritersCorps and is currently working on a book of Bromance poems to his Bromantic Heroes.