COMPLICIT

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


1. Mosquitos copulate against my screen door.
When I flick at them, they float farther down screen.
Still fucking.
I’ve known men like that.
Men who turn disaster into opportunity.
Call it Karma Sutra.

2. Yesterday my ex calls.
Another crisis. I can’t stop listening.

3. Every time we see each other, it’s like
we’ve never been apart, he says.
I have no idea what he’s talking about.

4. He steps into my personal space
like a virus.

5. On Spring St. there’s a dead rat on the sidewalk,
his stiff paws and foot-long tail.

6. We decide to give it another try.

7. The mosquito zapper in the bedroom sparks
and sizzles.

8. That joke about marrying a schizophrenic -
fuck a different man every night.

9. In the morning, my ex is so up in my face
he could lick me.

10. The rat is on the sidewalk. Still dead.


* * * * *

"Complicit" was first published in Moon Tide Press’s Anthology Lullaby of Teeth (Sept. 2017).

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, lume, 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