Photography © Alexis Rhone Fancher

 

Summer, New Mexico

We tore through the desert
Texas to Roswell
on retreads— the only
tires Dad could afford

the pavement rising
before us
empty of other cars
it heat shimmered
tar ghosts dancing.

Everything was so straight.

That road made a meal
the car wobbling
shedding rubber;
adding a stench to
the boiling air

we had to get out
while Dad jacked
changing to the spare.

Roadside, we waited
me and my brother
twitchy

flies weaving
in and out through
bramble weeds.

Then a long convoy
passed us by
in open trucks.
Some young soldiers waved.

We waved back.

 

Susan Isla Tepper has a new Novel just out titled Hair of a Fallen Angel from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC. A twenty-year writer, she’s authored twelve books of fiction and poetry and 5 stage plays. Honors include twenty-one Pushcart Prize Nominations. Her play The Crooked Heart concerning artist Jackson Pollock premiered on October 25, 2022 at the Irish Repertory Theatre in NYC. Adapted from an earlier novel, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. A new play titled Eva & Adamo is set to go up this year at THE TANK, NYC. Susan is a Brand Ambassador for The Galway Review.

Alexis Rhone Fancher won Best Micro Fiction 2025. She’s published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Verse Daily, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Diode, and elsewhere. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently Erotic: New & Selected (NYQ Books), and Duets (Small Harbor Press) an ekphrastic chapbook written with Virginia poet, Cynthia Atkins. Brazen, an erotic, full-length collection, the follow up to Erotic, published in 2023, again from NYQ. A coffee table book of Alexis’ photographs of Southern California poets will be published by Moon Tide Press in 2025. She and her husband live in the Mojave Desert.