When the famous poet's widower sidles up to you at her memorial by Alexis Rhone Fancher

he’ll ask if you’re the same girl who used to live on Clinton St., and weren’t your sons

once friends? Old, with bushy brows and a scraggly beard, he’ll be even more repellant.

 

You’ll recall his fusty smell, how he’d push his way into your apartment,

sit too close to you on your couch, uninvited, stroke your hair.

 

He’ll ask if you remember the handmade books he tried to sell you— 

scribbled drawings, pages of ramblings disguised as poems, ink-splotched, unintelligible,

 

glitter escaping from the gaping pages onto your apartment’s grey shag confusion;

how he almost coerced you into buying one, you, who could barely make rent,

 

who could barely afford cheap, Payless shoes for your growing boy.

 

Did I come on to you back then? he’ll ask, gripping your arm so you can’t escape.

He’ll feign foggy, confused. When you answer yes, he’ll smile, and say,

 

Yeah, well. In those days, I came on to everyone.

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Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Plume, Rattle, Diode, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She’s the author of three poetry collections, most recently, State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015) and Enter Here (2017). Her chapbook, Junkie Wife, will be published in March, 2018, by Moon Tide Press. Her photos are published worldwide. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. See www.alexisrhonefancher.com.