Alexa Doran | poetry | Any Last Words

    

Any Last Words




because I need my grief to dazzle you more than my Barbie-smooth crotch, I tell you our daughter
would be named Ember. And I like you more when you snicker. Say ohsolike the emo version of Amber.

I get it. Love is lateral. None of this trickle-down, coochie-always-crown, top-hound shit. Yet, I
wonder what version of you exists which string theory cannot explain in threads and slits.

God gets frustrated, having given us the endless star wound of space, and everyone still complaining
heaven should be closer, that He should have installed a dumbwaiter, none of this holy by proximity,

by nature, by legislature. You hang up and I know. This is how you deity. God has deserts, you have
the Block feature on Twitter to teach me what silence can grow. I am neither door nor bell though

you push my throat for the knell, the swallow of hope. Remember? Remember? I was puking in my
Civic, I was holding your lacrosse stick, I was too drunk as we walked into the mosh pit. You never

wanted any of this
. So what. My touch is more than the disarray of mermaid lingerie, the bilge of hotel
water swirled into the drain, the cum horizon lost to the grate, to manufactured rain. But you refuse

to admit the length of a voice is the length of childhood, and only you hear what I say.
.






**2024 Pushcart nominee

Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram

Alexa Doran (she/her) 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, Massachusetts Review, and NELLE among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit  alexadoran.com.