When the famous poet's widower sidles up to you at her memorial

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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L.A. poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los Angeles, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She’s the author of 5 poetry collections; How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), Junkie Wife, (2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (2019). EROTIC, New & Selected, publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com