Junkie Wife

"Alexis Rhone Fancher's poems are not for the squeamish—for anyone afraid of dirty words—but they are for anyone who has experienced mismatched desires, for anyone who has looked back at the past and felt relief tinged with regret, and as Fancher writes in "Snapshots and Lies," a miasma of scorching discontent. Which means all the rest of us. What you will encounter in this collection is the unraveling of a sick marriage and of a wife, but what you will take from the artful telling, careful verse, and precision of details, is the understanding that so much good art is born from survival."

— Sonia Greenfield, author of Boy with a Halo at Farmer’s Market

"Not since Bukowski have we seen an L.A. like this; not since Simone de Beauvoir, such a force of feminine will; and not since Baudelaire, have we seen the dysfunctional marriage of vice and virtue as a means to attain the spiritual. “No names were changed. No one was innocent.” So begins Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Junkie Wife, a stunning work of raw honesty that injects grit back into the bloodless veins of contemporary American poetry and holds it there until a dark and addicting beauty oozes out."

— Clint Margrave author of Salute the Wreckage and The Early Death of Men

"In “Junkie Wife,” Alexis Rhone Fancher, has brilliantly given us a film noir in the form of 30 sharply crafted poem-scenes, each one flowing seamlessly into the next. A master of the cinematic zoom, Fancher directs us to an overwatered houseplant, or a spot on the floor and its poignancy ripples outward like radio waves. She smacks you again and again with the honesty of a moment, but you, like the characters in this story will not be able to walk away, nor will you want to. Sex, betrayal, and need are major players here and are exquisitely showcased with a narrative drive that will not let you put this chapbook down."

— Francine Witte, author of Café Crazy

"Nothing shocks this poet with her sharp photographer’s eye, her sustained attention on the grit and addiction and sex against the neon of Hollywood Blvd. And yet each admission, each detail so carefully wrought in its rawness and pain—a punch to the gut. Rhone Fancher's wit and candor born of survival are apparent in every line, the tongue-in-cheek and wink of every poem a delight to follow, as in "Coercion" after Margaret Atwood, in which the speaker plays with tradition in the brassy voice of The Junkie Wife: "Back then, we fit together like / cooking spoons in a drawer. // Bent spoons. A cadaver drawer." This poet recognizes the grime beneath the shimmer. She never looks away."

— Jennifer Givhan, author of Landscape with Headless Mama

"Alexis Rhone Fancher doesn’t flirt. Her poems are all energy; the images and narratives she chooses create a dynamic landscape. In “Junkie Wife”, her talents are on full display. The poems in this playful, sexy chapbook are fierce, thick flicks of her poetic capability, the kind of poetry you don’t often get to experience."

— Darren C. Demaree, author of Two Towns Over