1.

our bodies are a haven from August.

this summer all we do is rut

mattress on the carpet

him on me

a miasma of scorching discontent.

 2.

dingy sheets. the 

dryer eats them and my future

gets stuck in the holes.

 3.

how did I know he wanted that baby?

 4.

at the window,

he smokes Marlboro, taps ashes

on the losers below.

 5.

there’s not enough air to go around.

 6.

I found a corpse in the kitchen, I tell him.

 7.

he flicks his dead daddy’s Zippo 

again and again, 

surveys the neon-tinged city.

8.

I want to steal something important.

9.

I reach for his pride on the window ledge.

he flicks me away like a gnat.

10.

the tv’s been broken since May.

From JUNKIE WIFE, Moon Tide Press, 2018. 

©

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Duende, Plume, Diode, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s authored five published poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. Her photographs are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Pithead Chapel, Heyday and Witness. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com