Tell the ******* truth, Gwen Stefani, bleach blonde vamp.
Questions stack up in the recesses of my mind,
A renovation’s trash pile of drywall dust.
You changed me, but there are things to clean up.

Did you just take a break to remake your image
For swarms of chubby white suburban pre-teens
Swarming in packs at the middle school dance?
Are those the only bees you could catch in your hive?

How did you meld and mold the Harajuku girls
To fit in the camera’s crosshairs or to walk
the thin line of a New York fashion week runway?
I must admit I still have my bottle of L.A.M.B.

Was the woman who screeched she was Just a Girl
Just floundering for fame? Does this happen to
Every mid-level artist? Will my inkwell turn
To the blood of an easy fan base too?

I wanted you to be my mother, but you picked
my platinum model sister as your favorite.
But will I still become you, even though I know
You’re false? Your press coverage can’t reveal the future.

Black tar lies spew from US magazine covers
Eyes dark, I gobble them up in violent shudders.

Dear Gwen Stefani Circa 2006,
The first music I chose to like that wasn’t
just my mom’s tuning of the radio was

Your solo CD, the first and best of two, which
I made sure to get on my twelfth birthday, after
I made sure to get my first kiss.

We were not rookie sixth graders anymore,
In soggy bathing suits teeming with pubescence,
So I publicized my plans to plant one on

Yeorgios Mavromatis, the new seventh grade boyfriend,
The first boy to buy me jewelry I would not like,
The first boy I used to make myself infamous.

Our hallway bottlenecked with twelve year olds,
Alone we sat on the bed, legs dangling above
The stained beige carpet. The kiss was damp and boring.

But the crowd that pressed at the door was an ******,
Surged voices told me my dad was walking up the stairs,
I arched around to throw the boyfriend in the closet,

My father caught me, and I wore the walk through them
Like your scarlet lipstick. The album of
My first kiss was not passion, but gossip.

I’ve seen you in red lipstick, bindis, and blue hair,
A pink wedding dress, and a Platinum Blonde Life.
I knew you were making art meant to publicize.

The songs and the clothes and the Harajuku Girls,
The boys and the clothes and the Children’s Theatre,
The day I made a scene was the day I knew.

Catholic guilt and couture gilt and creative goals
Took two West Coast girls, only twenty three years apart
And turned them into people you paid attention to.