1.
Stan likes me in those cut off jeans that fringe
my upper thighs, fringe I unravel when I watch
TV, after my homework’s done.
I do it for Stan.
2.
He says I’m rocking this silver
bikini. It makes my nipples hard.
3.
He says in this suit I look like “moonlight
flickering in a jar.”
4.
Swimming laps.
Going nowhere. Disastrous
pair: Daddy’s flirty little girl, and his
good friend, Stan. Beer in hand. Watching
when he thinks no one’s watching.
I swim for Stan.
5.
Smolder-eyed, half-lidded, snake.
6.
He almost touched me.
He never touched me.
He almost never touched me:
Choose one.
7.
Driving me home from
Northridge, Stan’s daughter, Ruthie
asleep in back; me, strapped in
front, the seatbelt dissecting my
budding breasts.
Stan’s speeding,
his eyes on the road,
left hand on the wheel,
right hand lost in the no-man’s land
between my knees and thighs.
“Shhh!” he soothes when I whimper,
afraid he’s gone too far.
He thumbs the fabric instead of me,
whistles the theme from
Mission Impossible.
That fringe! That fringe! Oh, that fringe!
First published in Quaint Magazine. Nominated for Best of The Net 2015.
Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Plume, Rattle, Diode, Rust & Moth, Nashville Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems,(2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), and Enter Here (2017). A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
http://www.alexisrhonefancher.com
Photograph by Muffinn.
califragile.org 