When my son’s ticket was about
to go to warrant, I went to the
courthouse and explained to the judge
that he was in the hospital, dying.
Someone gasped.
Someone grabbed my hand. 

Josh lusted over a muscle car, a 
Dodge Charger with a Hemi-powered,
5.7L V8 under the hood.
He wanted me to buy it. I wanted to 
lease it. He said that meant I
knew he was going to die.

The judge looked over the warrant.
“He’s in the hospital, you say?”
“Yes, your honor. 
Terminal cancer.”
“Good,” she said. She handed the
paperwork back to the bailiff.
“Then he won’t be driving
without a license,
out there endangering others.”

—First appeared in the “Mothers” issue of Broad! (Summer 2014); republished here by author’s permission

Alexis Rhone Fancher

is a Los Angeles-based poet/photographer whose work can or soon will be found in Rattle, Fjords Review, The MacGuffin, Deep Water Literary Journal, BoySlut, Carnival Lit Magazine, Luciferous, HighCoupe, Gutter Eloquence, The Good Men Project, Bare Hands, Poetry Super Highway, The Juice Bar, Poeticdiversity, Little Raven, Bukowski On Wry, numerous anthologies, and elsewhere.

Her photographs, published world-wide, include a spread in HEArt Online, and the covers of Witness and The Mas Tequila Review. A member of Jack Grapes’ L.A. Poets and Writers Collective, Alexis was nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. She is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.

www.lapoetrix.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Poet Reads Three Poems, text and audio in Menacing Hedge (Winter 2015); includes the prose poem “Tonight I Dream of My Last Meal with My First Ex-Husband Who Was Both Fickle and Bent”

⚡ Author Alexis Rhone Fancher Eats Bukowski for Breakfast, a review of her book, How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen, and other heart stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014), in Examiner.com (25 August 2014); includes “I Want Louboutin Heels,” “The Happiest Men in L.A.,” and two other poems