Undeniable Signs of Homicidal Violence

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


I’d never have guessed from the looks of him: tall, clear-skinned, elegant. Wardrobe straight out of G.Q. A whiff of patchouli in his wake, meant to keep a woman off guard. And such kind eyes! A devastating shade of blue. Arctic, is how I think of them now, but back then they were piercing. Intense. Words I use to lie to myself when I can’t face the dirty truth about someone I’d like to fuck. It always starts out fine, right? My new love ticks all the boxes, performs those courtship ploys girls are taught to desire. The stock seduction scenarios men use to bait, hook, and then - let wiggle on that hook until she’s beat down, compliant. Or dead. I’m trying to conjure the chum, the shift, the sharp pull on the line that reeled me in. Snuffed me out. Why? What changed? I’m doing research, watching countless episodes of ID Obsession, The First 48, and Forensic Files. Going back over every misstep. Taking copious notes. The segue that men do once they’re sure you can’t live without them? Is it something the woman does or says that starts her down the denigration path? Ever since I let him move in with me, eat at my table, share my bed, the relationship’s downhill. I love you, baby, he says, but no more civilities, opening doors, rubbing my feet, doing the dishes after supper. Now, each day he gets shorter with me. Cruel. Aren’t you finished grieving yet? he asked a week after my best friend died. She’s not coming back. Get over it! I chalk up his callousness to a horrible childhood, a single mom with serial boyfriends who beat him. How he ran away at sixteen, did a stint in juvie, and found Jesus, had him tattooed on his chest. Yesterday, I discovered him scrolling through my phone. Delete. Delete. Delete. Now at restaurants, he orders for me. The diet plate. Gotta watch your weight, babe,” he says, winks broadly at the waitress. When I ask him what’s changed, he explains he’s just settling in. That I should get used to it. Man is king of his castle, he says. I am your king. He quits his job, plays video games all day and night. Starts drinking at 9 am, in time to watch Wayne Brady on Let’s Make a Deal. What happened to the man I fell for? These days I do nothing right, berated for the least transgression. So when he knocks me around, tells me it’s for your own good, I believe it. When he snuffs out my words with his hand over my mouth I quit talking. And when he pummels me in my sleep one night when he comes home drunk, again, I let him. I must deserve it. When the gun is missing from my night stand drawer, I bust out a window, tell the police there’s been a break-in, no idea as to the perpetrator. And when my beloved shoots me four times with my own gun, I play dead. I’ll kill you, and then I’ll kill me, he’d promised, those blue eyes sincere. But he lied. He wiped the gun, put it in my right hand. Like I’d shot myself four times, lived to tell the tale.


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"Undeniable Signs of Homicidal Violence" was first published in Live Encounters (2022).

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.