Tonight you must plow me a respite between the moonflowers, 
mock orange, night phlox, and Epiphyllum oxypetalum. 
You must open me to the summer night like cereus. 

You must pick my perversions like petals, allow them for one night 
to bloom, frangipani wafting, a concupiscent wind humming at my door.

I’ve surrendered to your heady sweat of primrose, plumeria, 
addicted to your outstretched arms of night-blooming jasmine, 
my heliotrope buds hard and wanting, reeking of Madagascar vanilla with its 
accompanying moral ambiguity. 

I am more than a day lily.

We are each bodies, hard-wired for pleasure, destined for momentary blooming, 
then extinction. 

When the bats swarm and the moths sidle up to this one night of fevered 
pollination, let’s be ready. 

Let’s face them, our appetency the headlights they slam into again and again. 

We will make our escape at first light. Singing.

—Previously published in Petals in the Pan Anthology, Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2015 (Winner of the 2014 Summer Poetry Contest at the Los Angeles Poet Society); republished here by author’s permission

Alexis Rhone Fancher

is a poet and photographer based in L.A. whose work has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net Award. She is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and Other Heart Stab Poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014), available on Amazon.

Her works have been published in Rattle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Ragazine, Cactus Heart, The MacGuffin, Fjords Review, and:

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audioclips

alexis [at] lapoetrix [dot] com

Her photos are published worldwide. A total stage junkie, she is infamous for her recent Lit Crawl performance at Romantix, a NoHo sex shop, as well as for her readings all over L.A. In her other life, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Six Fancher Poems, which Steve Kowit, former Poetry Editor of Serving House Journal, had chosen for the spring 2015 issue before he passed away in April; all six poems plus poet’s commentaries appear in the SHJ memorial issue.

⚡ 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