After The Restraining Order Expires, M. Begs Me To Meet Him For Lunch

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


Says he ‘killed it’ in anger management class,
that everything’s under control. Bygones.

I drink my unrequited malice.
Wonder how soon he’ll turn deadly.

You’re a sip, he says, barely a swallow.
He laps up my resistance,

leans over, nuzzles my neck,
wraps his arm around my indecision.

Remind me again why we broke up?
He was always a fine interrogator.

I watch his shirt ride up above his belly,
where I’d lay my head to suck him off.

The desperation of his stark, white skin,
the crude exposure.

I’d pull his shirt back down,
but it would be too much like tenderness.


* * * * *

"After The Restraining Order Expires, M. Begs Me To Meet Him For Lunch" was first published in Willawaw Journal (2018).

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