Mosquito Nocturne. 
Desperation shrieks. Sickens. 
You’ll eat me alive. 

Gunshots smacked the night. 
I thought I heard my life stop. 
A premonition. 

Your conspirators 
threw me in the car. I saw 
I was outnumbered. 

I’d stashed the thumb drive 
between my legs; with it I 
knew I could hang you. 

The bald one’s pate shined 
like the moon sweating bullets. 
September’s like that. 

The gimpy one smiled. 
Ripped the patch from his eye. 
“I see you now, bitch.” 

His attaché case 
held rope, gun and a motive. 
Me? I held my ground. 

Then the gloves came off. 
His cigarette burned my cheek. 
“Tell Us Where It Is!” 

When I wouldn’t break, 
you kissed me deadly. Then you 
parted my sad thighs. 


EPILOGUE: 

“Bleach kills everything.” 
The splatter expert cradled 
the Clorox and wept. 

Photographs copyrighted © by Alexis Rhone Fancher.

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s

photo-portrait book of 100+ Southern California poets will be published in early 2026 by Moon Tide Press, and a chapbook of her “Sister Pantoums” is forthcoming from MacQ in Spring 2026.

Rhone Fancher is the author of 11 published books, most recently Triggered: A Pillow Book (MacQ, 2023), an erotic chapbook collaboration with artist Kenna Barradell and editor Clare MacQueen; BRAZEN, a full-length erotic collection (NYQ Books, 2023); DUETS (Harbor Editions, 2022), an illustrated, ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins; and Stiletto Killer (in Italian) from Edizioni Ensemble, Italia (May 2022).

Other books include EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books, 2021); Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018); and three books from KYSO Flash Press: a full-length collection of poems, Enter Here (2017), and The Dead Kid Poems (2019), a companion chapbook to State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015).

Rhone Fancher’s poem “when I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:” was chosen by Edward Hirsch for inclusion in The Best American Poetry (2016). Her poems and flash fiction have been published in 200+ literary magazines and journals, including Aeolian Harp, Askew, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Gargoyle, Glass, Hobart, Nashville Review, Pedestal Magazine, Petrichor, Plume, Poetry East, Rattle, Slipstream, South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), Spillway, SWWIM, The American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, The night heron barks, Tinderbox, Verdad, Verse Daily, Vox Populi, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

You can find photographs by Alexis on the covers of Witness, Pithead Chapel, Pedestal Magazine, Heyday, and elsewhere, as well as a five-page spread in River Styx. Her street photography is published worldwide.

Since 2013, her writing has been nominated numerous times for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple times for these annual anthology awards: Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. Her work was selected by final judge Dawn Raffel for Best Microfiction 2025.

Until summer 2023, Alexis and her husband were living and collaborating on the bluffs of San Pedro, California, 25 miles from downtown L.A. They’re now settled in the Mojave Desert a hundred miles east, and they still have a spectacular view.

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audio/