There’s a 19 car pile up on Vasquez Rocks.
You’re late. This would be a good excuse.
I want to grind that thought out like your cigarette.
Drive right over it.
You were dead to me the first time
I found motel matches
in your pocket.
You brought me offramp roses.
Your fingers smelled like someone else.
When the traffic doesn’t move
when I’m lost again in Pasadena
and my pussy dampens,
I think of fellating you on the freeway
to pass the time.
Is that what you’re thinking of?
From the 5 to the 2 to the 134.
Take the Pearblossom Highway.
Make a smooth transition.
Tell me exactly how it’s going down and
I’ll write that poem.
The one where you’re supposed to
be on time, and I’m supposed to care.
Previously published in Ragazine.
Los Angeles poet, Alexis Rhone Fancher, is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), and Enter Here (forthcoming in 2017). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Rust+Moth, streetcake, Hobart, Cleaver, Public Pool, H_NGM_N, Fjords Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. Her photographs are published worldwide. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly, where she also publishes a monthly photo essay, “The Poet’s Eye,” about her on-going love affair with Los Angeles. Find her at alexisrhonefancher.com.
