We call it afterglow, this reluctance 
to uncouple, heartbeats synchronized, 
in cahoots. We linger. 
 
I caress his pecs, circle his left nipple 
with my tongue, my ear close to his heart. 
A human electrocardiogram, he ignites sparks. 
 
When we fuck he is ventricles, arteries, 
rimming my heart’s surface, pumping pleasure 
like oxygen into me, into us. 
 
Webster defines it: “Young, easily cut beef, and 
a sentimental heart can each be called tender.” 
If you’re cooking, baby, make mine rare. 
 
I hold my breath—will time to stop 
in this heady space. Let us linger in his tenderness. 

—One of six odes published previously in Rat’s Ass Review (Winter 2021); appears here with poet’s permission.

Alexis Rhone Fancher

is the author of six books of poetry and photography: EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books, 2021); Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018); How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart-stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014); and three books published by KYSO Flash Press: State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015) and its companion chapbook, The Dead Kid Poems (2019); and Enter Here (2017), a full-length collection of photographs and erotic poems.

Rhone Fancher’s writing has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and appears in more than 100 literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2016, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, The MacGuffin, Slipstream, Cleaver Magazine, Diode, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Fjords Review, Rust + Moth, Pirene’s Fountain, Askew, KYSO Flash, and The American Journal of Poetry.

Her photographs have been published worldwide, including spreads in Diaphanous, KYSO Flash, The Lummox, Serving House Journal, River Styx, and Rogue Agent, and on the covers of Chiron Review, Heyday Magazine, Nerve Cowboy, Pithead Chapel, The Mas Tequila Review, Witness and two KYSO Flash anthologies (2015, and the 2018 volume, Accidents of Light).

A lifelong Angeleno, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. From the S-curves of Topanga and the sprawling beaches of the Westside, to the stunning views of downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) from her previous loft studio, her beloved city can be construed as another character in her work. She and her husband now live on the cliffs of San Pedro, a sleepy beach community 20 miles from their former digs in DTLA. They still have an extraordinary view.

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audio/

alexis [at] lapoetrix [dot] com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Double-Timed at the Nickel Diner, erotic micro-fiction in MacQ (Issue 5, October 2020)

Erotic works by Alexis Rhone Fancher in KYSO Flash:

⚡ Lola the Human Vagina at UC Medical School (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ Why I Almost Forgave You (Perché ti ho quasi perdonato) (Issue 8, August 2017)

⚡ I Prefer Pussy (Issue 6, Fall 2016);
the poet reads this poem on YouTube (Moon Tide Press, 13 March 2020).

⚡ Morning Wood (Issue 2, Winter 2015)

⚡ Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, flash fiction (Issue 2, Winter 2015)