“Keep Walking” (On Las Palmas Ave., Approaching Hollywood Blvd., I Hear A Scream)

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

In the spill of the porch lamp the girl looks fourteen, 

cowering in the courtyard of this windy night, 

cheap stilettos stemming her pale legs up into tiny shorts.

Two men the size of refrigerators 

slap her face like she’s meat that needs 

tenderizing. One stands behind her, pins her arms;

the other brute yells in her face:

“You will fuck who I say when I say!”

When he hauls off to smack her again I look away.

In Hollywood the streets talk trash, hold murder

in their asphalt, blood in the potholes,

used hypodermics float in the gutters, rats

dance on the lawns.

The girl lurches, stumbles in those 5-inch heels,
the only thing separating her from the ground. 

The two men toss her back and forth 

like a football. Her eyes catch mine.

When her pimp sees me he hollers in my face. 

"Keep Walking!”

I’m late. My dealer is impatient.

I do what I’m told.

High on pot. Tequila. Fear.

I head into the neon of Hollywood Blvd.,

keep walking till I can’t hear her screams.

* * * * *

 "'Keep Walking' (On Las Palmas Ave., Approaching Hollywood Blvd., I Hear A Scream)" is from Alexis Rhone Fancher's 2018 chapbook Junkie Wife and was first published in Toad.

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), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Hobart, Pirene’s Fountain, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Nashville Review, Diode, Glass, Tinderbox, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her photos are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Witness, Heyday, The Chiron Review, and Nerve Cowboy. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. She lives in Los Angeles. www.alexisrhonefancher.com