Lexi Rosen
An Elegant Waning and Waxing On The Woes of Twenty Something Queer Girl Friendships
With the scraping tool in the back
of my mouth she asks, Do you have
any poems you’re working on right now?
She retracts the tool. I tell her I’m thinking about how God
named Eve “mother,” but neither she nor Adam knew what
that word meant. Ah, yes. Eve. The split of the twin flame.
You know, they made whole churches just for Mary.
I hum, sort of. She cleans, scrapes, and scrapes me clean.
The sun is male and water is female. All the rain
and water, that’s women. We’re seeing that coming
back, like it should. Men just have certain jobs.
I gag on the suction tool, and she wipes the spit
from my chin. She tells me my gum health has improved
since last year. I give her a thumbs-up she can’t see.
In my skull, my teeth shine and ache.
Good for biting. Good for eating fruit.
Lexi Rosen (she/her) only knows how to want. She studied Fiction at The University of Redlands and holds a dual-genre MFA (Fiction and Poetry) from The Vermont College of Fine Arts. She loves her people, eating cake with a spoon, and disco balls, and her work can be found at Maudlin House, HAD, Past Ten, Bullshit Lit!, and Fugue. She is also a recipient of the Jean Burden Poetry Prize Honorable Mention. Lexi is Editor-in-Chief of Silly Goose Press and writes from the Chicagoland area and planes.Honk at her: IG @lex.rosen, others @lexirosenwrites or www.lexirosenwrites.com
Artwork: “Swimmer” by Daniel Lurie
Digital