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. 

First published in RATTLE.

This poem is a persona poem, written in the voice of the author's beloved friend, Kate, who died of cancer in 2014

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, Cleaver, Diode, Poetry East, Pirene’s Fountain, Flock, Duende, Nashville Review, 

Mead, The 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). Her photographs are featured worldwide. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com