Dress Rehearsal

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

I am trying on death like dresses.      

The black, Donna Karan sheath beckons. Perfect for weddings, funerals,
twice to court. Killer side slits.
Call it 38 Special.

The skimpy red “bandage” dress, tags still attached, dinner with Allison, a no-show.
Do I want to be dressed in devastation, found like that?
Call it death by misadventure.

The white silk shirtwaist with black polka dots Stella bought me at a discount
when she worked at I. Magnin. The back-stab stain that made it unwearable.
Call it exsanguination.

The blue velvet gown, ripped by Lorraine while tonguing Veuve Clicquot from my throat.
She left $300 on the nightstand with a note: “Je ne regrette rien.”
Call it strangulation.

The wraparound Diane Von Furstenberg I wore to give Anjelica and her T-Bird the runaround.
Easy on/off. Like us, that molten L.A. summer when I first slummed with girls.
Call it autoerotic asphyxiation.

The babydoll dress from my twenties I can’t get rid of; white lace, pearl buttons,
straight jacket sleeves, mini-skirt flirting my reticent thighs.
Call it buried alive.


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“Dress Rehearsal” was previously published in Mudfish 22 (2020)

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Verse Daily, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Diode, and elsewhere. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently Triggered (MacQueen’s), Erotic: New & Selected (NYQ Books), and Duets, with Cynthia Atkins (Small Harbor Press). Brazen, an erotic, full-length collection, the follow up to Erotic, published in 2023, again from NYQ. A coffee table book of Alexis’ photographs of Southern California poets will be published by Moon Tide Press in 2024. She lives in the Mojave Desert with her husband, Fancher. They have an incredible view.