Denise Duhamel and Aaron Smith
In the movie Boys on the Side, they made an appearance. They sang “Joking” and “Southland in the Springtime,” and I knew immediately it was them because I’m such a fan. I said to my friend Laura, “Look, the Indigo Girls!” She started to sing along, but because we were at the movies somebody shushed her. I’ve seen them in concert nine times and counting. Everyone is either an Amy or an Emily. Or maybe there’s a spectrum: like you could be an Emily with an Amy rising. Pretty Barbie grooved to “Closer to Fine” when she left Barbieland questioning why she and her friends never died. On her way to the “real world,” the Indigo Girls serenaded her in purple and blue, sultry and otherworldly. Barbie was letting go of her pink tendencies, her chipper blather. After the young ones in the movie theater unearthed their momma’s 1980s CDs. Every kid must make a value-judgment when it comes to their music and, way back when, I watched American Bandstand and knew I needed something extra, less elegant, a little earthy, an acoustic cause that my young heart could get behind, like caring for the Amazon before Amazon zoomed things to doors in 3 days or fewer with Prime. And that’s when I found the Girls on a white cassette that my first bisexual friend gave to me. I loved the song “Prince of Darkness” and couldn’t imagine getting away from my own anxiety and depression until I heard it. Amy and Emily met at Laurel Ridge Elementary, in sixth grade, the same grade my own sadness kicked in full force. But I had my friend Nancy (maybe she was an Emily?) the girl who got me through. She painted big canvases and I had my poems. Once she drew caricatures of us driving away in tiny cars.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025). She and the late Maureen Seaton co-authored six collections, the most recent of which is Tilt (Bridwell Press, 2025). She is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.
Aaron Smith is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Stop Lying (2023), and with Maureen Seaton he co-authored Beautiful People (2025). He’s the co-host of the podcast Breaking Form and teaches at Lesley University.