Lexi Pelle
poetry
Lexi Pelle was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plume, West Branch, Rattle, 32 Poems, and Only Poems. She is the author of the poetry collection Let Go With The Lights On (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023).
Nudie Mags
for Rich
Kate and I found the shoebox
stuffed behind the sweaters
on our stepdad’s top shelf.
We stared at the women’s
parted mouths, hair wild
as brushfire, many of them
kneeling the way a parent does
to tend a wound. We laughed
as we looked, and they looked
back: eyes blue as the marbles
we begged him to buy us
at the market. How carefully
he counted the last ones
in his tattered wallet.
We licked our fingers
clean of churro sugar as he
handed us the drawstring bag.
I still can’t get over how
he stayed no matter what
we did: drew thick Sharpie
dicks into the mouths of
the glossy women, left
the marbles unopened
in the back of his car
for weeks. Once,
I caught him hanging
the panties mom washed
for me; his fingers on
the part that hugged my hip,
so careful not to touch
the crotch as he laid
them on the drying rack.
Never in my life have I
been not touched like that.
“
I love narrative poems, particularly when they elevate a complex moment that might otherwise be overlooked. I liked the idea of juxtaposing a moment in which an adult’s sexuality is acknowledged by a child and yet isn’t directed at, or threatening to, the child—these moments are complex and, at least for me, deeply healing. It took me a long time to figure out how to convey how nonsexual and respectful the laundry moment was; the emphasis on negation in the last line felt essential to me.
”
