June Fairchild isn’t Dead, by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Photography by Alexis Rhone Fancher (USA) contemporary

June Fairchild isn’t Dead 
 
she’s planning a comeback.
she’s snorting Ajax for the camera.
she’s landing a role on “I Spy.”
she’s writing her number on a napkin and 
handing it to me at King Eddy’s Saloon.
 
June Fairchild isn't dead
she’s just been voted Mardi Gras Girl at Aviation High.
she’s acting in a movie with Roger Vadim.
she’s gyrating at Gazarri’s, doing the Watusi with Sam The Sham.
she’s mainlining heroin in a cardboard box. 
 
June Fairchild isn't dead
I saw her tying one on at King Eddy’s Saloon.
she’s making ‘Drive, He Said,” with Jack Nicholson.
she’s selling the Daily News in front of the courthouse.
she’s snorting Ajax for the camera.
 
June Fairchild isn't dead
she’s relapsing in front of the Alexandria Hotel.
she’s working as a taxi dancer, making $200 a shift.
I saw her vamping with Hefner, frugging on YouTube.
she’s naming Danny Hutton’s band 3 Dog Night.
 
June Fairchild isn't dead
she’s living at the Roslyn SRO on Main.
she’s giving up her daughter to her ex. 
she’s snorting Ajax for the camera.
she's planning a comeback, needs new headshots.
 
June Fairchild isn't dead
she’s Up In Smoke, getting clean.
she’s sitting by the phone.
she’s falling asleep in Laurel Canyon with a lit cigarette in her hand,
waiting for me to call.
 
Alexis Rhone Fancher

Author's Note: Former Gazarri’s dancer/film star June Fairchild, a self-proclaimed “angel in a 
snake pit," died of liver cancer on Feb. 17, 2015. She was 68 years old.
 
This poem was first published in Cleaver Magazine, 2016.

​Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Duende, Plume, Diode, Pedestal Magazine, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s authored five published poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, and another full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will both be published in early 2021. Her photographs are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Pithead Chapel, Heyday and Witness. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com