POETRY

Power Play

When my lover tells me I cannot say no, and I protest, she parts my legs, says yes, baby. Yes. I do what I’m told. No becomes a foreign country. I take it as permission. Open season. So when the waiter asks if there’ll be anything else, I peruse his menu. I’m stuffed, but I say yes, cram my mouth with macaroons and chocolate. And when the Lyft driver seduces me in the rear-view, eyes me like prey, asks, May I kiss you? I say yes. And when the long-legged woman I’ve long lusted after at the gym wonders aloud if I’m single, asks me to dinner and a movie, I say yes. And when she invites me into her bed, what can I say but yes, yes, yes? And when my fan in Nova Scotia begs me to be his muse, to sanction an explicit ode to my breasts, my ankles, my lower lip, a poem he’d never show his wife, I cannot say no to his lust and delusion. Now he wants to climb me, sublime me, shoot me full of stars. Is this what you want, too? he writes, and I answer yes. And when I return to my lover at last and she sinks into the heady dampness between my thighs, looks up at me and asks, Have you been faithful? I say, Yes.

©Alexis Rhone Fancher. Published in Harbor Review, 2020, nominated for Best of the Net, 2020.

We carry our identity on our fingertips

When you think that I’m not looking,
you bring your fingers to your nose.
We carry our identity on our fingertips,

you say, pattern recognition-based, 
all those whorls and arches.
I’d know them anywhere, baby,

your ridges, and loops,
how fiercely they grip and throttle.
Tonight I slice the garlic, season the roast,

rub cinnamon, brown sugar, pepper 
and salt into the meat.
Sear it evenly on all eight sides.

When I bring my fingers to my nostrils, I smell dinner;
when I bring them to yours, you smell love.
I watch you scrape those tasty bits

from the bottom of the pot,
deglaze with beef broth and merlot.
We tie the rosemary sprigs with twine;

float them above the nascent gravy,
chopped onions the crown on top.
You set the timer for 70 minutes,

program the Instant Pot for quick release.
Meanwhile, in the bedroom, we’ve got time.
You school me in the efficacy 

of facial recognition, palm prints, iris I.D.
rub your body all over mine, finger my flesh,
program me for quick release.

Published in The Night Heron Barks 2020

Roadkill, San Pedro

Yesterday a black cat’s severed head was found in my neighbor’s driveway. Just the head. Halloween’s around the corner, my lover says. Like that explains everything. I think it might be coyotes, but she says no, finding just the head is indicative of ritual sacrifice. If the coyotes got ‘em, she assures me, they’d leave more behind.    My lover is reading a book about humans as predators who invade a territory. Deplete its resources. Infect its inhabitants, and then move on, do it all again. She says it’s science fiction. I say there’s nothing fictional about it. Honestly, I don’t know why we’re still together. Except for the sex. How she knows exactly where to touch me. How I cannot get enough of her mouth. If we could just stay naked, I tell her, we might have a shot.    The neighbor’s new baby cries and cries. Today, for 30 minutes. I timed it, in case something happens and the detectives come calling. You’re a born rescuer, my lover says. I think that means she loves me. There’s a kitten, I tell her, inside a drainpipe on the corner of 5th and Nelson, in front of the ILW Local 63. When I mention I want to rescue him, name him Piper, she snaps. Are YOU going to change the litter box?    Each day we spat over trifles. Wertmüller or Pasolini. Smooth or crunchy. Reggae or Ska. She thinks we should blow our savings, fly to Patagonia, like Chatwin. Traverse South America. I think we should write our will, choose a cemetery, spend that money on a double-wide. We aren’t getting any younger. I want things settled, tidy, but she won’t budge. I hope to God I die first, I tell her. Leave you with all the chaos. She laughs. Don’t be naive, she says. There is no God. 

Published in RATTLE Poets Respond. 10/27/20

Midnight In The Backyard of Lust and Longing

The sapphists are at it again. Screw you’s! ricochet off our common walls, invectives landmine my window. You cheating bitch! Like clockwork, this drunken Friday night climax to their ceaseless lovers’ quarrel. I’ll kill you! I hear the big one growl. And then the smashed plates, the screams. By the time the cops arrive it’s a full-out brawl, the two women spilling from their back door, tussling across the no man’s land between their tiny backyard and mine. Worse than animals. This time it’s Holly, the younger one, dragged to the patrol car, yellow hair wilding, small hands cuffed behind her back, kicking at the cops in those Daisy Dukes, an army jacket waifing her silhouette. More clothes than she had on the last time the cops rolled up. Or the time before. It’s almost dawn, and the trees shiver in the fog, raccoons slink through the tall grass. Marie, Holly’s better half, paces the yard in a blue bathrobe and slippers, smoking a cigarette, sobbing as the cops jam her lover into their car. Watch her head! she cries, and flings herself across the yard, lunges for Holly through the glass. Baby! Baby! she sobs, the reason for their discord forgotten. Holly mouths a sloppy kiss. Marie opens her robe, presses herself against the glass. Can you believe it? I would give anything to be loved like that. 

©Alexis Rhone Fancher. First published in Slipstream Summer 2019

THE GOD FOR BROKEN PEOPLE

There is a god for broken people - Roxane Gay

This is the god for the second rate, the one who waylays you at the party, plies you with bourbon, fucks you in the kitchen, makes you walk home in the rain. This god shines in the run off. This god hustles the night. This god mines the maimed, culls emotional cripples off the top like cream. This god is a shape-shifter, a dumpster diver, the god who loiters at the corner of Dolorosa & Despair. This god drinks alone. The god for broken people trolls the city for discards, marries the exploited with the lost. This god sweeps up the miscreants, gusts their darkness into night. This is the god of no hope. No money. This god has your back when you backslide. This god bets on you to fail, hides in your broken places. This god is willing to wait. When you’re ready to surrender, remember: this is your last, best chance. This god will not stick by you, won’t give you false hope. This god will kill you. Or save you. Choose.

Published in San Pedro River Review, 2019

Clueless

“Even a man who believes in nothing can find a girl who believes in him.” - Joe. “You” American Thriller Series on Netflix, 2018 1st Episode.

Even a man who believes in nothing can find a girl who believes in him, but doesn’t believe in herself. And if he’s genius, he’ll keep it that way, keep her rudderless, shipwrecked, lost. I’ve been that damsel, and it ain’t pretty. The way he’ll make the world constrict and loved ones disappear, usurping them with an insatiable thirst for his approval, a toxic longing so deep you can draw water. He’ll drink it up, suck her Sahara. Swear he’s smitten while sexting the siren he’s just met in the checkout line at 7-Eleven. He’ll count on her Cinderella complex, low amour propre, and rescue fantasies. He’ll be the one she's saved herself for—she'll be another notch on his gun. A hundred times I've seen it, one ‘duped-girl’ generation to another. You’d think millennials would have a clue not to get drunk at parties, fall into bed with brag-mouthed boys, to trust no one--let alone get in his car--throw themselves so willingly under life’s callous bus. Don’t these girls watch Lifetime movies? Law & Order SVU? Don’t they read YA novels and listen to their moms? Some things don’t change. Boys will be bad. And girls won’t believe it.

Published in GARGOYLE #72, Winter, 2021

Overdose 

No, he did not look natural in his coffin.
He is not in a better place.

Don’t compare your pain to mine. Your dog 
getting hit by a truck is not the same.

You really don’t know how I feel.

Don’t say you’re devastated.
Does it always have to be about you?

Don’t ask me about Fentanyl.
Don’t tell me not to dwell.

Don’t minimize my loss.
My boy is not better off dead.

For once, let’s say it like it is:

He did not pass away.
He died.

There is no plan.
Don’t say he is at peace. 

Silence is good. A hug.
Tell me you have no words. 

Or tell me stories of that summer
he rode the bulls in Ogden,

all that life tightly in his grip.

for K.S-B.

First published in THE DEAD KID POEMS (KYSO Flash Press, 2019),
Honorable Mention, Beyond Baroque Poetry Contest, 2019, Judged by Diane Seuss

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