Alexa Doran

FOR MY SON WHO ASKS WHY

Maybe we only get to be a mother once
     and the rest is repetition I keep thinking
I’ll get another chance at the garden
to glow slick with some stamen     to honey
and honey this womb      Have you seen the
conifer twirled in winter     this is the gentle
with which I would shimmer     if I could
double and brew but    puff puff pass      out
is hardly a bedtime story even if the dragon
is delicate not gory             even if the sirens
shed their sex        dredged sweat and invite
you to tarry    who is to say      I deserve two
I never thought of semen      as another kind
of dreaming             but lately it has the same
oracle bright shade       crystal balls emanate
and if I could just gather                 in its gloss
muck my ovaries     and toss in its wake then
what      then I could fan out: so many blades

Alexa Doran is the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019), and is currently a PhD candidate at Florida State University. Her series of poems about the women of Dada, “The Octopus Breath on Her Neck,” was recently released as part of Oxidant/Engine’s BoxSet Series Vol 2. You can also look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Passages North, Salamander, Pithead Chapel and Harvard Review, among others.