Pretty cool for a kid who watched
too much Disney channel
and threw so many peace signs
at Polaroids my Nana
had to give me a nickel
to stop. Amoebas with attitude
sashaying through a sea of
autotuned pink, pinky
promise pink, gum-poppin’ pink.
Now muted tones like bone,
ecru, beige. I’m afraid I’m plain
as a stack of blank stationary —
I want someone to sense
I’m special, and I want
that specialness beyond
any specialness imagined:
a god you can understand
wouldn’t be a god worth worshiping.
I want to pick the lock
of my childhood and find
the girl I never was
smiling, somewhere
inside her a celestial savannah
sprawls with neon creatures
so pretty its violent
to want them
to be anything except
a pelt. I know
she doesn’t exist — still
I stumble through
the tall grasses looking for
where she would’ve
dropped her spear.
— LEXI PELLE
Lexi Pelle lives in Randolph, New Jersey, with her two dogs. She was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Ninth Letter, One Art, Sucarnochee Review, and Zenaida. Her debut book, Let Go With The Lights On, will be released in May.