I cup my hands around the crescent moon, pasted onto the night. It’s bitter cold. I forgot to dress for the weather. A light sweater, no coat, no scarf, hat or gloves. I can hear my dead mother’s voice, scolding me for not paying attention, not thinking things through. You’ll catch your death, she says. I admit, I take too many chances. Like these solitary, late-night strolls. Tempting that evil creep my mom stuffed into my childhood brain. That sicko whose lust for girls labeled him a rapist or a serial killer. My very own Ted Bundy. But I need to think and I can’t think at home. I feel safer walking the late-night streets, alone. The fog has swallowed all the stars; the moon is almost invisible. I don’t mind the dark; in my black clothes I blend in. Harder to see. I long to be invisible. I don’t want to be found. Jimmy says I’m impulsive. You’re so careless! he tells me. He speaks in my dead mother’s voice. He’s inherited the position of official chastiser. I barely listen. It makes him crazy. But I’ve heard it all before. I asked him what changed. When did he stop admiring the risk-taking, high-flying woman he fell for so hard? When did his fascination turn to fear? When I realized I love you, Jimmy confessed. This is why I walk. And walk. Shivering in the cold. I liked the old me. Now that he loves me, the things I like about myself must change. Now that he loves me, he needs me to transform, but that woman is not me. I’m afraid he’ll find some other woman, one with wings she’s willing to surrender when he clips them. If I do what he wants, I may be grounded forever. Either way, I’m fucked.

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s

photo-portrait book of 100+ Southern California poets is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2026. She is the author of 12 published books, most recently Sinkhole: The Sister Pantoums (MacQ Books, 2026); Triggered: A Pillow Book (MacQ, 2023), an erotic chapbook collaboration with artist Kenna Barradell and editor Clare MacQueen; and BRAZEN, a full-length erotic collection (NYQ Books, 2023).

Other books by Rhone Fancher include DUETS (Harbor Editions, 2022), an illustrated, ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins; Stiletto Killer (in Italian) from Edizioni Ensemble, Italia (May 2022); 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; The American Journal of Poetry; Askew; Cleaver; Diode; Duende; Gargoyle; Glass; Hobart; The MacGuffin; Nashville Review; The Night Heron Barks; Pedestal Magazine; Petrichor; Plume; Poetry East; Rattle; Slipstream; South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo); Spillway; SWWIM; Tinderbox; Verdad; Verse Daily; Vox Populi; Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015); and elsewhere.

You can find Rhone Fancher’s photographs 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

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