(Menage a Trois) TONIGHT I DREAM OF MY FIRST TRUE LOVE

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

“Trembling, like Paris, on the brink of an obscure and formidable

revolution.” —Victor Hugo

It feels like a competition. I lay between the two of them, sweltering, like Paris in

August. Gene’s lanky six foot four inches hangs off the foot of the bed, Brett’s

dancer-body liquid, compact, is curled into mine, his hard need pressed against my

thigh. I’m not sure how I ended up here, in love with a man who wants me to fuck

his best friend while he watches. Now the three of us crowd in my too-small bed. I

stare at a black and white photo of Montmartre on the ceiling. Brett trembles like

needle to the pole. Van Morrison’s on the radio, having sex in the green grass with

the brown-eyed girl. The ceiling fan rotates counterclockwise, but we’re all

sweating. I should have moved the beds together when my roommate moved out,

but it’s too late, now Gene’s spread my thighs, and pinned his best friend against

the wall, and now he says nothing while Brett watches him slam into me. I need

him to scream I love you! again and again like he did before. But Gene’s eyes are

locked with Brett’s. I see what I’m not meant to see; I am disposable, nothing more

than a deep hole. A hot rain pelts the bedroom window. Gene pours into me like

runoff. His tears look like raindrops on glass. I turn his face so he can see what he

is losing. I want him to watch his best friend as he arches his dancer’s back and

comes in my mouth, his spasms an arabesque. I pull back my hair and dip my head,

trembling, like Paris, on the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution.

* * * * *

©Alexis Rhone Fancher. First published in HOBART (2016)

Los Angeles poet, Alexis Rhone Fancher, is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael 

Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), and 

Enter Here (forthcoming in 2017). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, 

Slipstream, Rust+Moth, streetcake, Hobart, Cleaver, Public Pool, H_NGM_N, Fjords Review, 

The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. Her photographs are published worldwide. A multiple Pushcart 

Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly, where she also 

publishes a monthly photo essay, “The Poet’s Eye,” about her on-going love affair with Los 

Angeles. Find her at: www.alexisrhonefancher.com.