Not Tiny’s usual, lipstick lesbos, trannies. But tonight she wants to look up the skirt of the sad girl at the bar, buy her a Cosmopolitan. Follow her home. Sad girl toasts her latest benefactress, a charm bracelet rattling on her arm. “New Beginnings,” she says, though she doesn’t believe it. If new beginnings were gold charms, she’d be rich, the bracelet too heavy for her slender wrist. No longer somebody’s whore. Tiny catches a glimpse of the covered-up bruise, the long scar right above her knee. The sad girl crosses her legs. A wall goes up. Like China.

—From How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen: and other heart-stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014, Kindle edition); republished here by author’s permission

Bio: Alexis Rhone Fancher