Exit Interview:
If you could only know one sadness. forever. would you know your own? where would you put mine? are there Ball jars to drop it in? mink shawls to be stuffed with the droop of my shoulders? No, I am not interested in pleasure. I am interested in home. in wandering literally every garden I cross with your Dickies hooked in my thumb. No, there are not enough gardens to love you in. Yes, I remember Hop on Pop. the words so fucking easy. Noun. Noun. Noun. Oh. I see what you did there. This isn’t about building a story out of things sheared of their actions. This is about the sex we used to have. It’s always about the sex we used to have. I want it to be about the sex we used to have. Now that there isn’t enough of me to throw against the bricks you see me as a lull. not short for lullaby. Can you make a graph? a bar one with Barbie pink bars? charting every dream I had where you slipped foil off chocolate? Easter blue foil and Easter blue undies and the pictures you sent me still mopping the air I breathe, still anchors for all my smoke.
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, Salt Hill Journal, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.
