My Son is No Longer a Novelty
Alexa Doran
and I’ll always be angry / because I love the way the red carpet used to run / beneath my son /
And I’ll have you know his bones / are no less tinsel thin at thirteen months than ten / but
somehow you keep missing / the delicate shore of his grin / the way it washes over him / instead
of scrambling across his chin / the mark of so many men / Buy the sparklers in bulk / I plan on
sixty years of babying him / And no it’s not his birthday again / but there’s glitter and hours and
God / so every day another baptism / another holy flood glistens / and believe me Mary / that
same little sheep sparkles / and bucks inside him / but this one isn’t white / blank / or even all
that innocent / take the dustbowl of his curls for instance / I have died / just touching them /
wouldn’t you Mary / lay your hands / on the tussle of your son’s hair / let the little ringlets / ring
you again / if the sun let you / and the air could
Alexa Doran is a mother, a lyrical gangster, and a PhD student at FSU. She has recently been feature or is forthcoming in CALYX, The Pinch, Connotation Press, The Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Juked and Posit literary magazines. One of her poems about Dada artist Emmy Hennings recently won first place in the Sidney Lanier Poetry competition.