Sweet Tooth, by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Photography by Alexis Rhone Fancher (USA) contemporary

Sweet Tooth

The man in the window is cheesecake; 
if I could soar across Main St.
and land in his arms, I’d eat him for dessert.
 
He’s caramel poured in those low-slung jeans, 
a Sugar Daddy™ (‘lasts forever if you lick it right’).
 
He’s marzipan, clean-cut, the jut of his hipbone 
reflecting the sun. I’m come undone
 
by the clockwork of his days,
his devil’s food dismount from that Shimano aluminum bike,
how he disappears inside the foyer.
 
If he were mine, 
I’d ride him like a stolen bicycle.
 
He strips down to sweetmeat, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. 
“Happy Hour,” when
 
he hangs the bike on the wall. 
And me, happy to watch his muscles ripple.
 
He stretches out on the bed, my creature of habit,
his O’Henry™ straining against its wrapper.
 
This I know:
He’s an all-day sucker.
He doesn’t believe in drapes.

Alexis Rhone Fancher

This poem was first published in Plume.

​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