Jan. 22, 2023
Audio
Ode to Exposure Response Prevention Therapy, or: I watch a slideshow of dead animals to make me into a better person
By Alyssandra Tobin
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Ode to Exposure Response Prevention Therapy, or: I watch a slideshow of dead animals to make me into a better person
By Alyssandra Tobin
The slideshow is of roads in Montana.
The slideshow features dead and bloodied deer, foxes, and squirrels.
The slideshow makes me sit at my desk and pretend it’s a car.
The slideshow brings me to gravelly tears.
The slideshow asks where am I ever even going.
It shows me I'm so little.
The slideshow wills the blood to stay inside all my burdened loves.
The slideshow tattoos my chest: filigree stippled onto my sternum, the sides of my breasts.
The slideshow steps on my toes.
It tells me beer will depress me, and buys me a gose anyway.
The slideshow gives a man a gift that’s really more like a token.
The slideshow closes one eye, then the other.
The slideshow wills the blood to never leave my mom, my dad.
Wears purple lace pasties.
It knows how to pole dance. It got top surgery and now its chest is flat and good.
The slideshow skips the conference, cries at home instead.
The slideshow wills the blood to never leave my body.
The slideshow brings me inside an owl’s eye, dark & mossy & brimming with mist.
The slideshow yearns and mopes. It counts digital coins.
Gets scammed by someone in Kansas, loses all its slideshow money.
The slideshow asks: and what of it.
The slideshow answers: I still have this whimsy, this looming death.
It counts its uncomfortable fingers as currency.
The slideshow beckons. Don’t tell me I don’t know suffering.
The slideshow says: The bugs are in my brain. I see them, naturally.
Alyssandra Tobin
Alyssandra Tobin (she/they) was grown on Boston's North Shore. Her chapbook, Put Eyes on Me Not Like a Curse, was published by Quarterly West in 2022. Their poetry appears in Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Gigantic Sequins, Grist, Banshee, and elsewhere.
Visit their website, or follow them on IG and Facebook.
Image Description: A close-up of a pale, white woman with dark hair looking off to the side.