Thursday 8 August 2019


Tuesday Nights, Room 28 of the Royal Motel on Little Santa Monica

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


John Colton likes to call me sweet girl.
He likes to call me baby cakes.
He likes to call me late at night,
after his wife’s asleep.

Tuesday nights at the Royal Motel
I vamp for him in the steamed-up bathroom.

He likes to watch me shave
my legs in the tub.
He likes to shave my bush
into a valentine.

He likes to watch me
pinch my nipples till his dick gets hard,
then push my pudenda
into his wet smile.

Tuesday nights at the Royal Motel
John Colton says it’s better with me on top.
I ride him slo-mo, adagio.
First gear.

I could be anyone.
A Maserati, a long-lost symphony,
a one-time spritz at the fragrance counter
at Sak’s Fifth Avenue.

He could be my father.

Tuesday nights at the Royal Motel
John Colton lights my Marlboro
after we fuck.
We watch the match burn down
to his fingertips.

I’m afraid to blow it out.

Tuesday nights at the Royal Motel
he holds me like I matter.

It’s just sex, he sighs.
He brushes the hair from my face,
plants a kiss on my forehead.

You’re my first, I whisper,
just to fuck with him.

Tuesday night at the Royal Motel
when John Colton doesn’t show
I wait by the side of the bed.

In the morning, the voice mail.
The fire. The accidental burning.

I burn for you, sweet girl, he said.


* * * * *

"Tuesday Nights, Room 28 of the Royal Motel on Little Santa Monica" was first published in Little Raven 4, Australia (2016).

L.A. poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The 
American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville ReviewWide Awake, Poets of Los 
Angeles, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She’s the author of 5 poetry collections; How I 
Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), Enter 
Here (2017), Junkie Wife (2018)and The Dead Kid Poems (2019). EROTIC, New & Selected, 
publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 
nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com


1 comment:

  1. "I’m afraid to blow it out." Yet it always burns down. May I say, combustible?

    ReplyDelete