Moon-baiting with Sophie Taeuber

[after Self Portrait, Strasbourg, 1926, photograph, 1926]
 

I expected this from you. Using light to night
your face, you nest your fingers on the knob,

refuse to let go. I too want to master the ever
after grope. Want my son to sweater my teeth,

to amber my hope. I know you know. A queen
against the sigh of womb thick lines, your hands

are gates to the garden I want my son to hoe.
Let the sun fist his blade. Let the worms sift

your foam. I get it. Ink is a kind of control. But
it’s the mural of spin cycles, the flurry of stubbed

out cells you blur behind you which I want to creep
up the cream tint of the page and settle along his throat.

I want him to forget you, woman curlicued around
the camera, pressing time into blackberry ash, so that

the only thing he ever learns to grow is smoke.
 
 
 
Alexa Doran is a mother, a lyrical gangster, and a PhD student at FSU. She has work recently published in Guernica, The Mom Egg Review, and Tahoma Literary Review, among others. For a complete list of publications, interviews, and honors, visit https://aed16e.wixsite.com/alexadoranpoet.