Alexis Rhone Fancher

When My Son Is Dead 16 Years

After you died, my
Beautiful boy,
Chaos ruled my life.
Desperate I was, to find you,
Even hired a private detective to
Follow you into the Afterlife,
Given he could pick up your scent.
How do the dead do it?
Integrate the living.
Join hands in a ghostly dance,
Keep one foot in each world –
Love?
Madness?
No. A tether to each
Other’s heart.
People, meaning well,
Quote Scripture,
Rescue my resurrection poems
So they feel better.
Today, you are dead 5,840 days.
Unfathomable. I still
Veer off course,
Wait for you by the door marked
X-It as if you’ll reappear. One day,
You’ll be dead longer than you lived.
Zip it! I scold myself, each year. Move on.

Author: Alexis Rhone Fancher

Alexis Rhone Fancher has authored seven collections, including The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press) and Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press). EROTIC:New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, dropped in March, 2021. She’s published in Best American Poetry, SWWIM, Nasty Women Poets, Cleaver, Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, The Pedestal Magazine, Gargoyle, Plume, Spillway, and elsewhere. Her photos are published world-wide. Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. She and her husband live and frolic in Los Angeles, CA.
Find her at www.alexisrhonefancher.com

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