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      November 13, 2022Aaron Carter You Are Dead and Never Read the Book I Wrote About YouWheeler Light

      Once I loved you. Seven
      and what did I know about sex?
       
      I howled at your laserdisc moon,
      found a boy with frosted tips
      and kissed the fantasy of you
      for all of second grade.
       
      I didn’t grow up to be gay,
      a disappointment to only the poems
      I write about you.
      The boy with your hair grew up
      to be an alcoholic,
      I grew up to get sober at 22,
      and you grew up to be dead.
       
      Aaron Carter, I don’t know where
      they will hold your funeral
      but tonight I am wearing black
      wandering Greenwich Village
      wanting to hear “I Want Candy”
      behind the ambient curtains of jazz.
       
      I want every basketball court to cut
      the net down. I want Shaq to take
      a knee and still be taller than me.
      I want Leslie to whisper your name
      and find you. Tonight, I pray to your pop
      and the world is a bisexual opera
      harmonizing cock. Tonight, I worry
      about Nick, every anxious addict knows
      what it is to mourn a stranger they loved.
       
      Tonight, I want candy. Say lick.
      Tonight, I want high spirits, say lift.
       
      Tonight, I want your memory to say live.
      Your fruity-loop ambitions, slender wrists.
      The first CD I ever owned, the poster
      on the inside of my closet door. My first show.
       
      Oh Aaron Carter, patron ghost, a bright warning.
      Popstar shooting across the past’s sky waning.
      Tonight I place a wish on you, a kiss
      on the shiny moon. Rewind the track.
      The car is in the driveway.
      Clean up the house.
      The party is over.
      You are coming home.

      from Poets Respond

      Wheeler Light

      “Aaron Carter died last week, which is tragic. Aaron Carter was a musician, addict, and my first celebrity crush. When I was a child, his music opened up a world of love to me and began my personal exploration/discovery. His story is a story of exploitation and neglect, but his effect was a ubiquitous joy that befell many millennials. I wrote a chapbook about him called I Want Candy, which was accepted for publication by two presses, but I pulled the chapbook both times, because I didn’t feel comfortable with anyone having access to it. This poem is elegy, a follow-up, a tabloid about a musician’s work the world was lucky to have.”

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