I Give in Again
Alexa Doran


 
I Give in Again   
          
              to the cartoon gingerbread
   you’ve nicknamed “numbies”
                     the zombie cookies
           that march in mass gluttony
across the screen – what does it mean
           that you know every word to this scene
but wouldn’t know Jesus from a drag queen?
 
At two years old
           I haven’t taught you to believe
                                            in anything.
The world stretches – the freshest taffy
            sweet for tapping
and I don’t want to interrupt mid-chew
 
to burst in! on all that softness
                 to bind that briar to you -
why separate one miracle from the rest?
          The same way you refuse
to see the moon
                  (it’s sun night or noon)
nothing isn’t holy yet
                                in your view.
 
This morning in the church
           parking lot across the street
we chuck rocks at a tree
 Lean in    I say    
                  it’s part aim, part fate
 
       and you unlock your elbow
                           a sequin gone liquid
 amidst the bricks and stubble
             of steeples
                             so that your rock
wedges into the wounds
                       between the roots.
 
And I am certain this is prayer.
 
                  Our bodies bent in the butterfly clasp
       of Florida’s air, surrounding
                              a pebble, cheering
             its small journey
                                  to anywhere.
 
 










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About the Author: Alexa Doran is poet pursuing her PhD at FSU. Her work has recently been featured or is
forthcoming in Guernica, Glass, Tahoma Literary Review, McNeese Review, FIVE:2:ONE and Conduit, among others. She was the first-place recipient of the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing 2018 Parent/Writer Fellowship and has been nominated for 2018 Best of the Net by Posit and Ilanot Review
.

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