Alexis Rhone Fancher
Last Night On The Nature Channel We See Each Other For Who We Really Are
1. Varanus komodoensis:
Watch the Komodo dragon swallow a monkey in increments,
and tell me you’re unchanged. I dare you.
It feels familiar, but it could be a dream.
The bottom half, floppy, long tail and hind legs all loosie-goosie.
Like me, bandy-legged, woozy after you’ve worked your lingual magic.
Poor monkey! You used to say, only you meant me.
I’ve seen objects disappear inside your mouth, remember?
I get excited just thinking about it.
2. Draco viridi luscus:
I’m trying hard to give you another chance, but that green-eyed dragon
has taught me to expect the worst. Already I’m feeling at loose ends, swallowed up.
You’re on your best behavior until you’re not.
Dusk finds the crows still raucous, flying circles around us.
The old tom yawls a horney duet, his one good eye on the lookout.
When My Son Is Two Weeks Old, Yvonne Gives Me A Massage
1. After his birth,
milk whirlpools my body,
centrifugal force
a seductive tug at my uterus.
Orgasmic, the rhythm and pull
of his suckling. I, besotted.
Devoured.
2. Prone on the slim table,
Yvonne oils my back, massages the ache
- those bra straps dug into my shoulder blades -
her slippery hands, hot, reverent.
She looks at me like my son does,
famished.
Her fingers flip the same switch
that primes my pump;
oxytocin floods my body.
I dampen.
And when she turns me on my back,
milk auto-pilots from my breasts.
I am leaking.
3. Yvonne, who is barren,
moans as breast milk splashes
on the terrazzo floor.
I see my reflection
through her surprise:
pleasure bubbling over
like a fountain.
“‘Last Night on the Nature Channel we See Each Other for Who We Really Are’ - The look of ecstasy on the face of the Komodo dragon eating a monkey head-first was horrifying, yet I couldn’t look away. I’d seen that same gleam in my lover’s eyes.
’When My Son Is Two Weeks Old, Yvonne Gives Me A Massage’ - Sometimes intimacy takes a surprising turn, with sexual pleasure to be found in unexpected places.”
Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Verse Daily, Plume, Rattle, Diode, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. She’s the author of four poetry collections; How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
