C-Section
Sometimes when the room is made of oak
and I am made of flesh
the room and I mix like air and incense : our fusion a funnel of smoke
That’s how you left my body, Buggy
Cloud ladled out of me.
All the other babies
puddling between their mothers’ thighs
while you rose like any rainbow
a fountain of every light / but your own
Unfettered flume!
the sky spread into a cape around you
*It was better not to touch you
*It was better that the room was white and used
*That the surgeon whispered trippy as he felt the willow weight of you
Like all those plump bastards, young and hanging
from Michelangelo’s roof
you were cherub chiseled in the ceiling
and I was artist-peasant-falling
beneath you
Son to say I was afraid
of the star cough covered in blood/of the birth of my son/of giving gravity its due
to say that I cannot huff and puff
enough to keep you afloat
is a version of the truth that never reaches you like blades
that rotate on a fan
all you hear is my breath below choo choo choo choo
Alexa Doran is a mother, a lyrical gangster, and a PhD student at FSU. She has recently been featured or is forthcoming in CALYX, The Pinch, Gertrude Press, The Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Juked, Connotation Press, and Posit literary magazines. One of her poems about Dada artist Emmy Hennings recently won first place in the Sidney Lanier Poetry competition.