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alexis pope

 

from That Which Comes After

 

Conversion van on blocks

Nothing was glorified

We can’t unfuck anyone

Could gather a list

Be more problematic

Assemble the fruitless blame

Plump & yellow buttercups

For the doxen to piss

Remove the alcohol content

Small blue pill

To say I’m fallen out

Implicate my judgment

Disable my alarms

Blue plate special with fresh banana

Fat gold tuba in the trunk

Whichever comes first or who

Leaves who waits

It out the semantics

A diaphragm built for two

We exist in the ending for

Years rebuilt at our sides

I can’t see your face

I want to see your face

The kind of person that chooses

A white car looks bad in snow

Palm the clutch for speed through

All our best years in reverse

 

from That Which Comes After

 

And I collect the pretty ones

Lemondrop in the delicate cycle

Every moth the same color

The dust that shook when it flew

From my chest how you saw it

You told me after trembling

In the raw September heat

What got left behind as stains

Let the casserole thaw for one hour

Boil sugar in water

Jump the gate & let me through

Love has me backed over

Who else has forgotten about me

To find me laying eggs in the flour

Spoil the milk after opening

I stick to your sides as cream

Lonely for winter

Gluing paper flowers to the walls


 

from That Which Comes After

 

If I take my pill

Too early makes me nauseous

Pay my rent with loans

Not everything can be toasted

Yogurt for instance

Helps balance my ph

I care about some things

Because I’m older

Notice the shifts

In my body routine

Not a fan of dogs

With curly hair

Not convinced

Drano works there

Are some moments my own

Experience as film reel

My apologies

To the projector

Some pictures

Should never be

Your delicate demeanor

Never cried over

Maybe that’s not true

 

 

 

Alexis Pope is the author of Soft Threat (Coconut Books, 2014), as well as three chapbooks. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bat City Review, Birdfeast, Denver Quarterly, Poor Claudia :: Phenome, and The Volta, among others. She lives in Brooklyn.