the gardeners are cutting down the giant yucca tree with a chainsaw, while inside, we have sex. It’s a turn on, one man inside me, and two outside, silhouetted against the vertical blinds; it makes me even louder than usual. But my moans are obliterated by the chainsaw’s guttural wail, mixed with the gardeners’ chatter, as they sever the yucca’s limbs. Twin brothers, the gardeners arrive bi-weekly to manicure the grass, trim the hedges. They’re identical, stocky, bearded. Muscles ripple their shirts. Tools hang from their utility belts, sagging their jeans. I say hello when we cross paths, feel the warmth of their smiles. I imagine them now, twin faces against the glass, peering through a space in the slats, made aware of me in deshabille, a crimson corset winnowing my waist, pale-nippled breasts overflowing the cups. It’s hot, and I’ve pinned my black hair atop my head, loose tendrils trailing down my sweaty neck.

Who told them to murder the yucca? Its spiked leaves hid our daytime exploits, bedroom window open to the breeze. Gone, we stifle. But an open window, my lover cautions, is a voyeur’s carte blanche. Would those two spy on him, nibbling me, his face between my lace garters? I like you accessible, my lover says. I wonder, would the twins like that, too? Afterward, I rush to the window to view the carnage. The brothers long gone. The yucca, in pieces, spilling sap, mirrors the trickle down my inner thighs.

—From the author’s latest collection, EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books, March 2021); appears here with her permission.

Alexis Rhone Fancher

is the author of six books of poetry and photography: EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books, 2021); Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018); How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart-stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014); and three books published by KYSO Flash Press: State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015) and its companion chapbook, The Dead Kid Poems (2019); and Enter Here (2017), a full-length collection of photographs and erotic poems.

Rhone Fancher’s writing has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and appears in more than 100 literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2016, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, The MacGuffin, Slipstream, Cleaver Magazine, Diode, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Fjords Review, Rust + Moth, Pirene’s Fountain, Askew, KYSO Flash, and The American Journal of Poetry.

Her photographs have been published worldwide, including spreads in Diaphanous, KYSO Flash, The Lummox, Serving House Journal, River Styx, and Rogue Agent, and on the covers of Chiron Review, Heyday Magazine, Nerve Cowboy, Pithead Chapel, The Mas Tequila Review, Witness and two KYSO Flash anthologies (2015, and the 2018 volume, Accidents of Light).

A lifelong Angeleno, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. From the S-curves of Topanga and the sprawling beaches of the Westside, to the stunning views of downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) from her previous loft studio, her beloved city can be construed as another character in her work. She and her husband now live on the cliffs of San Pedro, a sleepy beach community 20 miles from their former digs in DTLA. They still have an extraordinary view.

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audio/

alexis [at] lapoetrix [dot] com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Double-Timed at the Nickel Diner, erotic micro-fiction in MacQ (Issue 5, October 2020)

Erotic works by Alexis Rhone Fancher in KYSO Flash:

⚡ Lola the Human Vagina at UC Medical School (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ Why I Almost Forgave You (Perché ti ho quasi perdonato) (Issue 8, August 2017)

⚡ I Prefer Pussy (Issue 6, Fall 2016);
the poet reads this poem on YouTube (Moon Tide Press, 13 March 2020).

⚡ Morning Wood (Issue 2, Winter 2015)

⚡ Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, flash fiction (Issue 2, Winter 2015)