Alexa Doran | Hex
I survive sex by composing comedy
routines centered on the men I fuck:
a Seinfeld scoff for balls gone gargoyle
with gravity, a certain fuck yo couch vibe
for every lackluster lunge at my body.
This is the hunted learning to make jazz
of the chase. The same way each night
my son and I name the rain. Patter #3.
Silhouette of a Sonata. God’s First Leak.
I admit it’s habit. Filtering even sky,
even orgasm into word. Pretending
everything can be learned if I choose
the right verb. The last time you saw
my son, all he said was your name.
Can you picture that parking lot?
You were ½ drunk beneath a baseball
cap; Florida, a pink drool framing him
as he crushed the carnations I had
almost forgot to buy him against his 8
year old chest. I wish I could boil that
exchange into laughs like I once did
to your dick-chap, to the cartoon thunk
thunk of every boy who ripped a bong
long enough to leer at my ass. I wish
that your name died in his mouth, like
red dies into purple, leaving nothing
of its original tint, and in that blend,
the solace: some names are just wind.
routines centered on the men I fuck:
a Seinfeld scoff for balls gone gargoyle
with gravity, a certain fuck yo couch vibe
for every lackluster lunge at my body.
This is the hunted learning to make jazz
of the chase. The same way each night
my son and I name the rain. Patter #3.
Silhouette of a Sonata. God’s First Leak.
I admit it’s habit. Filtering even sky,
even orgasm into word. Pretending
everything can be learned if I choose
the right verb. The last time you saw
my son, all he said was your name.
Can you picture that parking lot?
You were ½ drunk beneath a baseball
cap; Florida, a pink drool framing him
as he crushed the carnations I had
almost forgot to buy him against his 8
year old chest. I wish I could boil that
exchange into laughs like I once did
to your dick-chap, to the cartoon thunk
thunk of every boy who ripped a bong
long enough to leer at my ass. I wish
that your name died in his mouth, like
red dies into purple, leaving nothing
of its original tint, and in that blend,
the solace: some names are just wind.
Alexa Doran recently completed 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, Witness, Massachusetts Review, pidgeonholes, NELLE, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.
