Side Cars are for Bitches

So I drink them. My beloved pet bunny Lennie
just passed away at only nine years old,
and Zach Braff isn’t here to help me bury him.


Zach Braff is the perfect manic pixie dream boy
for any pet funeral, and yet, I suppose
he didn’t get the memo that he was meant


to come down from the Garden State and do the honors.
Lennie would have liked Zach, I know that.
They are both, after all, complete originals.


As a former server myself, I understand perhaps
Zach wasn’t able to get his shift covered
at the Japanese restaurant that doesn’t serve bread.


Maybe I should have made up a lie to get him here.
Come quick, Natalie Portman is in my bathtub
and she really wants an awkward dude


to listen to The Postal Service with her.
Maybe I should have made him an ugly shirt
or offered him drugs. I tease Zach,


but he likes it. We’re tight that way.
But no guy ever really shows up when
you need him, even if you think you’re close.


The real Zach Braff is stuck in 2004.
He doesn’t know that I need him right now
to go skinny dipping with me and take me


to scream in a sketchy quarry in the rain.
I need Zach Braff to tell off his buddies for me
and ditch his flight for me and kiss me


the way he kissed Natalie Portman.
Even if he knew that, maybe he wouldn’t care.
Zach Braff is just as numb as you or me.


He probably wouldn’t even know
what to say at Lennie’s service.
He didn’t really know him.


February 22, 2023
  •  
Poetry

Madison Whatley

Madison Whatley is a South Florida poet, an MFA candidate at Florida International University, and the Managing Editor at Gulf Stream Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Variant Literature, FreezeRay Poetry, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Sandhill Review, and 30 North, and is forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal.

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