Keith T. Fancher

Keith T. Fancher was born in the California redwoods and raised in the Blue Ridge foothills. He holds degrees in computer science and film studies, which are no help at all when publishing poems. Still, thanks to the kindness of strangers, his recent work can be found in Poetry Northwest, OPEN: Journal, and Right Hand Pointing. He lives in San Francisco.

Scrapping for a Cheeto

They fought like murder,
shaking with the rain

down from the trees
like something savored

then spat out when it sours.
A little box of jungle,

city cut away like silk
from a chest wound.

Feel the rising heat
and arrhythmia, all the sticky parts

with their special clockwork
feeling, spinning like the Brandenburgs

through space, by fire —
by ore and imagination.

Three bodies alive
and sparking off each other:

something human, the potential
for quick, unspecial violence

in three lean crows
scratching poems in the dirt.