Photography © Alexis Rhone Fancher

 

No More Smooth

Finally we’ve gone insane
the struggle is over

I can give up
paring the potatoes
you clearing dust
from the floors crushing me.

Pointing out
the loveliness
of it all—
I say
no more smooth boring edges

You just huddle naked
under what used to be sky.
I like you better this way

defeated by deafening darkness

While I pine for a loud crash
the blast from
a sudden volcano—
molten lava
riotous laughing
anything to crack this silence

waiting
to fall in
on me.

 

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty-year writer and author of 13 published books of fiction and poetry and 7 Stage Plays. Honors include 24 Pushcart Prize Nominations, a win in the Francis Ford Copolla Zoetrope Contest for the Novel (2003), Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award and more. 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. Susan is a Brand Ambassador for The Galway Review. Watch the YouTube music video for her new novel, Hair of a Fallen Angel.

Poet/photographer, Alexis Rhone Fancher has authored 11 books of poetry and flash, most recently, Erotic, and Brazen (both published by NYQ.), and Triggered (MacQueens). Coming up: A Picture is Worth a Poet’s Words, a photo-portrait book of over 100 Southern California poets will be published in early 2026 by Moon Tide Press, in addition to publishing Alexis’ full-length, erotic book of poems and flash fiction, CockSure. SinkHole, a chapbook of twenty-five“sister” pantoums, exploring her beloved sister’s final illness and death, will be published by MacQueen’s in January, 2026. A multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, Alexis recently won Best MicroFiction 2025. She calls the Mojave Desert home.