L’appel du vide

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


The romance is gone. I forget to bathe. Soon I’ll have eaten all the mangoes.
Try to think, my lover says, foot out the door, of the big picture. 

Today when I heard the garage door open my heart jumped and I thought of it,
the “big picture.” I want you not to have fucked her in our bed,” I want to say.

It’s not all bad, he answers. We have similar taste in women. This is not the first time
he’s waved romance in my face.

This pandemic, he says. It’s breakin’ my balls. His big hands cup my ass.

At midnight, I drive downtown. A straight shot on the 110 N, but for the over/underpass
near Watts where I want to swerve into oncoming traffic but, of course, there is none.

I return to remnants of moonlight and shut the blinds, but the truth persists, insidious; a germ.
The mango bowl: a hole now, nothing but air. And his voice diddling the dark. 


* * * * *

"L'Appel du Vide" was first published in the DIODE anthology, winter 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.