Indian Summer

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Sunday nights we’d drag the double mattress

to the roof, sleep under the stars, naked,

on cool, silk sheets that caught the moonlight.

I dazzled the heavens, my breasts fluorescent,

pin point nipples saluting the galaxies.

Your cock, darker than the rest of you,

would slip between my thighs.

You were better than any drug.

Friday and Saturday nights we’d head for North Beach

in our thrift shop finery, (my see-through

dress and platform shoes, your big black boots);

after-hours at Keystone Korners, you’d sit in with Freddy

Hubbard or Elvin Jones, play keyboards while I

listened from my ringside table.

I knew you’d be famous. Your name

on the club’s marquee, a recording contract

just a kiss away.

Meanwhile, you trawled the musicians’ union

for session work, paying gigs (weddings, bar mitzvahs), played

security guard at the Hofbrauhaus, coming home

at 3am, a purloined brisket or pork roast under your jacket,

cooked to perfection. Still warm.

Some nights, I’d sit at the bar, nursing a whisky,

watch you play adagios on the holster of your gun to combat

boredom, a scowl on your face, like you were straddling

the fence between guarding the place or robbing it,

each of us dreaming of Sunday nights when

we’d lie together on the rooftop, complicit  

in the steamy heat, searching each other’s  

faces for some secret, lost between us,

like how we fell in love in the first place.

* * * * *

"Indian Summer" was first published in Gold Man Review (2019).

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry East, Pedestal Magazine and elsewhere. She’s authored five poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, and another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will both be published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com