For today's full moon, the forty-fifth Moon Prize goes to Alexis Rhone Fancher's heart-breaking "Tonight At Last Call, J. Calls Me His Brown Liquor Girl, Again,"

Tonight At Last Call, J. Calls Me His Brown Liquor Girl, Again,

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

his voice dark urgency, like when we were attached.

I let him grip my hips, slow dance me back to that lust,

to the parking lot, his car,

my tube top a trophy in one hand,

a bottle of Southern Comfort in his other.

He pours that sweet Joplin down my throat,

guides my hand between his legs. Drives

to the Malibu motel with ocean views,

vibrating beds, and once more, our delicious thrashing,

complimentary KY where the Gideon should be,

the insomniac waves rocking us long before my marriage,

and now after.

When I ask him which part of me he loves best,

J. answers: What’s missing,

tonguing the place where my nipple had been.

He doesn’t mind the mastectomy scar,

the one my husband can’t bring himself to touch.

* * * * *

"Tonight At Last Call, J. Calls Me His Brown Liquor Girl, Again," was first published in Rattle.

L.A. poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The 

American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide 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