On today's full moon, the 143rd
Moon Prize goes to Alexis
Rhone Fancher's poem "Cruel Choices."
Cruel Choices
by Alexis Rhone Fancher
When my husband’s two grown
daughters are in town, the three of them go to the movies, or play pool. Share
dinner every night. Stay out late. I haven’t seen my stepdaughters since my son’s funeral in 2007. When people ask, I say nice things about the
girls, as if we had a relationship. When people ask if I have
children I change the subject. Or I lie, and say no. Or sometimes I put them on
the spot and tell them yes, but he died. They look aghast and want to know what
happened. Then I have to tell them about the cancer.
Sometimes, when the older daughter, his favorite, is in town, and
she and my husband are out together night after night, I wonder what it would
be like if that was me, and my boy, if life was fair, and, rather than my
husband having two children and I, none, we each had one living child. His
choice which one to keep.
Lately when people ask, I want to lie and say yes, my son is a
basketball coach; he married a beautiful Iranian model with kind eyes, and
they live in London with their twin girls who visit every summer; the same
twins his girlfriend aborted with my blessing when my son was eighteen, deemed
too young for fatherhood, and everyone said there would be all the time in the
world.
* * * * *
©Alexis Rhone Fancher, 2016, "Cruel
Choices" was first published in Askew and nominated for the
Pushcart Prize.
Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart,
Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, Cleaver, Diode, The American Journal of Poetry,
Spillway, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. She’s
authored ten poetry collections, most recently, Triggered, 2023
(MacQueen’s Publishing); Brazen, 2023 (NYQ Books); and Duets, (2022) an illustrated,
ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins, published
by Harbor Editions. Alexis’s photographs are featured worldwide including
the covers of The Pedestal Magazine, Witness, Heyday, Pithead Chapel,
and The Mas Tequila Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of
the Net nominee, you can find her at: www.alexisrhonefancher.com
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