From her upcoming book of L.A. noir …
When I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:
soon you’ll have breasts. They’ll mushroom on your
smooth chest like land mines.
A boy will show up, a schoolmate, or the gardener’s son.
Pole-cat around you. All brown-eyed persistence.
He’ll be everything your parents hate, a smart aleck,
a drop out, a street racer on the midnight prowl.
Even your best friend will call him a loser.
But this boy will steal your reason, have you
writing his name inside a scarlet heart, entwined
with misplaced passion and a bungled first kiss.
He’ll bivouac beneath your window, sweet-talk you
until you sneak out into his waiting complications.
Go ahead, tempt him with your new-found glamour.
Tumble into the backseat of his Ford at the top of Mulholland,
flushed with stardust, his mouth in a death-clamp on your nipple,
his worshipful fingers scatting sacraments on your clit.
Soon he will deceive you with your younger sister,
the girl who once loved you most in the world.
_________________________________________________
when your mother convinces you to take in your homeless younger sister…
She will date your boyfriend.
She’ll do it better than you ever did.
She’ll have nothing but time.
He’ll start showing up when you leave,
train her to make him the perfect BLT,
(crusts off, avocado on the side),
encourage his cheating heart,
suck his dick so good he’ll think
he’s died and gone to Jesus.
Your sister will borrow your clothes,
and look better in them than you ever did.
Someone will see her with your boyfriend
at the Grove, agonize for days
before deciding not to tell you.
Meanwhile he’ll buy her that fedora you
admired in Nordstrom’s window, the last one
in your size.
When you complain, your mother
will tell you it’s about time you learned to share.
While you’re at work, your sister will tend your garden,
weed the daisies, coax your gardenias into bloom.
No matter how many times you remind her,
she will one day forget to lock the gate;
your cat and your lawn chairs will disappear.
Your mother will say it serves you right.
Your sister will move into your boyfriend’s
big house in Laurel Canyon. He will ignore her,
and she will make a half-hearted suicide attempt;
you’ll rescue her once again.
Your mother will wash her hands of the pair of you,
then get cancer and die.
Smell the white gardenias in the yard.
Cherish their heady perfume. Float them in a crystal bowl.
Forgive your sister as she has forgiven you.
_____________________________________
the cool wind comes through me
like Jamaica
for T.M.
outside, it’s winter.
your life calls.
your wife calls.
you want to sail away.
turn back!
travel instead my aestival coastline,
throat,
collarbone,
my perfect breasts
sloped like berms in December.
brave the Bermuda Triangle
of my hips
and my belly,
the delectable delta
between my thighs;
plunder those places
your wife won’t
let you go.
desire rules our ocean.
your body echoes my
perfume.
if she loved you as I do,
you wouldn’t be here.
I wouldn’t taste like you.
______________________________________________
FREEWAY SEX
There’s a 19 car pile up on Vasquez Rocks.
You’re late. This would be a good excuse.
I want to grind that thought out like your cigarette.
Drive right over it.
You were dead to me the first time
I found motel matches
in your pocket.
You brought me offramp roses.
Your fingers smelled like someone else.
When the traffic doesn’t move
when I’m lost again in Pasadena
and my pussy dampens,
I think of fellating you on the freeway
to pass the time.
Is that what you’re thinking of?
From the 5 to the 2 to the 134.
Take the Pearblossom Highway.
Make a smooth transition.
Tell me exactly how it’s going down and
I’ll write that poem.
The one where you’re supposed to
be on time, and I’m supposed to care.
__________________________________________________________
Website: www.alexisrhonefancher.com
Outrageously good poetry! I want more…
I love these poems! Vivid, great details, wonderful!
Your writing is succinct yet full of images, emotions, and sensory stimulation. I enjoyed these poems a great deal and look forward to reading more.
More gems from Alexis … I especially liked the phrase:
“[…] sweet-talk you until you sneak out into his waiting complications”
DaP
Never disappointed with the work of Alexis– vivid and fluid, raw with incredible imagery. MORE I TELL YOU, I WANT MORE!
Provocative, piquant and peppery poems. Alexis Fancher at her very best!
Amazing stuff, my dear. Love love love!
Fabulous work. The provocative imagery is fantastic
Love the tangled sister relationship. Your cat & your lawn chairs will disappear. The others almost make me take sex seriously again. OK, not seriously, but maybe with salt. Great work, Alexis. Love the California in your poems.
Alexis’s ability to present sexual encounters in a fresh and provocative manner, connect it to family love and schisms, never ceases to amaze and thrill me. Write on Alexis, right on!
oh those offramp roses, and how you capture sisterhood, what true and urgent and succulent pieces:)
Beautiful, raunchy, heartbreaking. Thanks, Alexis!
Yes! These are amazing – heart-ripping with rubies spilling out. Terrific work, Alexis!
These finely-crafted poems hit me hard with their spot-on understanding of the human condition and their refreshing combination of earthy/eloquent language. Brava, Alexis Rhone Fancher!
I feel like I’m rocking. I feel like I’m rolling. I feel like I want to get my hands on the upcoming book and lick it all up and down the spine!
Outrageously good. Tough, sexy, heartbreaking. I love these poems.
Yes, yes, oh yes . . . . !
It’s hard to read these poems slowly,
even as much as I want to savor each word choice.
They hook me and run.
There is no saying no.
In Shock of Awe ! Stunning honesty in living prediction as a way of existence. There is so much more here than sex. The sinew of truth.
Alexis,
“…until you sneak out into his waiting complications.” Damn!
Every line, every word, and enjambment surprise is killing me.
Love love love your work. Thank you.
Eah poem had me from the first line. Tidy and clever. Love the loser boy who steals the young girl’s reason, and the last line of the sister poem has Alexis Rhone-Fancher written all over it. Your fearlessness might just be contagious.
Well, I really, really liked these. Sensual, sexy, funny, sad, true — and the rollercoaster of the narratives zoomed me uphill and down through my own life and through yours.
Great poems! Very intense.