Alexa Doran
To the Man Who Asks What I Know, Rhetorically, of Course, Because I Know Nothing
I try to delight in the edge of things.
The pubic hair startling my cheek, the cigar’s daffodil
earning its embers in the dark. All the men who know
where I end have run
rivers delicate as thumbs past the porch of my mouth
sure my thirst was a mango
halved from their drought. Luck me where lilac quirts
my thighs, in a puff of pot smoke
and Paris Hilton watch me rise, finally ready to muscle
phlox from your sheets
of ice. It took so long to understand you weren’t going
to cry, that cannabis is the only cock
I should suck, the only magic I should bride,
that you are schwag and chronic is the only balm worth
my time. You lied. And I wanted to buy that lie
a shot, to cozy it in Dickel, to settle into the burn-sweet
of liquor long enough to fjord your thistle, to trickle
your Cassiopeia of freckles
across my palms. One summer, my son saw my grandma’s
shin torn and cried will it ever stop bleeding mom
and that exact worry, that fear of a forever without a way
to staunch the swarm, made me realize
no matter how many rounds I bought, the lie would always
slosh until I was empty, runnel
with no cove to carry its bounty. When I say this is all
I’m capable of, you turn the shower on
leave me to the curtain’s glisten, the ghost of water drops.
The pubic hair startling my cheek, the cigar’s daffodil
earning its embers in the dark. All the men who know
where I end have run
rivers delicate as thumbs past the porch of my mouth
sure my thirst was a mango
halved from their drought. Luck me where lilac quirts
my thighs, in a puff of pot smoke
and Paris Hilton watch me rise, finally ready to muscle
phlox from your sheets
of ice. It took so long to understand you weren’t going
to cry, that cannabis is the only cock
I should suck, the only magic I should bride,
that you are schwag and chronic is the only balm worth
my time. You lied. And I wanted to buy that lie
a shot, to cozy it in Dickel, to settle into the burn-sweet
of liquor long enough to fjord your thistle, to trickle
your Cassiopeia of freckles
across my palms. One summer, my son saw my grandma’s
shin torn and cried will it ever stop bleeding mom
and that exact worry, that fear of a forever without a way
to staunch the swarm, made me realize
no matter how many rounds I bought, the lie would always
slosh until I was empty, runnel
with no cove to carry its bounty. When I say this is all
I’m capable of, you turn the shower on
leave me to the curtain’s glisten, the ghost of water drops.
Thesaurus (Breakup Version)
My childhood crush wires a city with light.
At five years old, I wrote his name in rose
hips pushed into lobes of snow
thinking this is a man worth wilting for.
You are always the same.
23 and half-fucking me. Cigarillo stubbed
between your teeth. So hard
to take you seriously you breathe
a-buck my body. Now you are worried
about the mystery. How to not Sherlock
this dream. But we are America,
a looming. A plastic heaven choo-chooing,
our graves neon against a borrowed night.
When you leave, I learn love
is a choice between nothing and paradise.
Theory: all men need is salt.
Theory: attraction is salt depletion.
Theory: There are no days, just valves
just the caterpillar of smoke, just
the cocoon thick of your lips
and whatever wing tips the air between us.
I hate you. This is not a theory.
This is a fun fact. New Orleans still
shawls my first hope. Still offers its girdle.
I never imagine his wife, just his mother
at the kitchen window, watching me plant
her son’s name using cemetery petals and
a face hurdled by January, by no.
At five years old, I wrote his name in rose
hips pushed into lobes of snow
thinking this is a man worth wilting for.
You are always the same.
23 and half-fucking me. Cigarillo stubbed
between your teeth. So hard
to take you seriously you breathe
a-buck my body. Now you are worried
about the mystery. How to not Sherlock
this dream. But we are America,
a looming. A plastic heaven choo-chooing,
our graves neon against a borrowed night.
When you leave, I learn love
is a choice between nothing and paradise.
Theory: all men need is salt.
Theory: attraction is salt depletion.
Theory: There are no days, just valves
just the caterpillar of smoke, just
the cocoon thick of your lips
and whatever wing tips the air between us.
I hate you. This is not a theory.
This is a fun fact. New Orleans still
shawls my first hope. Still offers its girdle.
I never imagine his wife, just his mother
at the kitchen window, watching me plant
her son’s name using cemetery petals and
a face hurdled by January, by no.
When My Son Asked Me to Define Pregnant
I said there’s no Disney or Heaven. Call it “panic”
call me “a dick,” but I needed those explosives
to ambrosia the sky so he wouldn’t notice I am
no longer the boat for that ride, the acreage
of my uterus set to expire. On the phone, you
“explain” it’s just a phase as if love short-circuits
with age, breathquick as wave, ready to die like
Big Pun when hip-hop still slayed. Forget your
refusal to father, to wander past the let’s not rush
things, just put on that G-string, past the menthol
glamor of your truck stop trailer – like haze
they have no weight. You are all
the “Christians” who need Jesus to love a thing
bigger than them, who need a human to die
before they’ll say amen. So, I shy from my son’s
question, trapped in an aisle of tendon, certain
only of humiliation, of the blood which erupts
each month. No one to pause the slough,
no shunt to stave the loss, nothing but fucking
fog. Still, if you could just see me from across
a room, light anywhere shadows anywhere, then
maybe we could fashion a better definition, not
words, but a chance to see body turn verb, skin
turn bird, to know the need is never just yours.
call me “a dick,” but I needed those explosives
to ambrosia the sky so he wouldn’t notice I am
no longer the boat for that ride, the acreage
of my uterus set to expire. On the phone, you
“explain” it’s just a phase as if love short-circuits
with age, breathquick as wave, ready to die like
Big Pun when hip-hop still slayed. Forget your
refusal to father, to wander past the let’s not rush
things, just put on that G-string, past the menthol
glamor of your truck stop trailer – like haze
they have no weight. You are all
the “Christians” who need Jesus to love a thing
bigger than them, who need a human to die
before they’ll say amen. So, I shy from my son’s
question, trapped in an aisle of tendon, certain
only of humiliation, of the blood which erupts
each month. No one to pause the slough,
no shunt to stave the loss, nothing but fucking
fog. Still, if you could just see me from across
a room, light anywhere shadows anywhere, then
maybe we could fashion a better definition, not
words, but a chance to see body turn verb, skin
turn bird, to know the need is never just yours.
Alexa Doran received her PhD in Poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). You can look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Literary Mama, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Salt Hill Journal, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website