“Things we lose are usually underneath something else.” -Benette R.

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

1.
I dream there is hair in my food.

In the morning, my lover says, “Yes, there’s 
a long hair in every dish you feed me.”

A strand of myself in every serving -
and he eats it like a condiment.

2.
“Looks like the same m.o.,”
the detective says, examining our broken
pane, bent screen. “He likes you 
long-haired girls.”

3.
I find myself alone in the kitchen, eating
rice I don’t remember cooking.

4.
When was the last time we had any fun?” 
my lover sighs. 

5.
I mean, who are we when we 
enter the Jacuzzi, and who are we
when we emerge? 

6.
I dream there is food in my hair.
And gum. And a switchblade.

7.
“For the vast majority of people,”
my mother said, just before she died.
“The thing that’s going to kill you
is already on the inside.”


* * * * *

“Things we lose are usually underneath something else.” was first published in decomP magazine (2017)

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