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Alexis Rhone Fancher

Portrait of a Woman As An Aerial Photograph

Patchwork by Lisa Segal

Look, he says, you can see the tillage, how it’s broken into parcels, gerrymandered into neat little exploitations. The long-legged stretch of yellow hills, the sweet divide and that grassy mound, don’t you see it? It’s a construct: a torso complete with wetlands, vulva, and thighs. She’s quite a spread, her legs straight as a virgin’s, ankles straining like restless nuns. When she ran, she rivered, stars strewed before her, an embrace. She ran south, toward her savior, the only one who could moisten her, wet her down to bedrock, fill her with all that diverted water, the icy quench that pooled in her hollows. Look, he says, don’t you see the blue? How it lapped her up, swallowed and made her a fertile field? Just added water.

 

About the writer:
L.A. poet, Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s the author of four poetry collections: How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). The Dead Kid Poems, her follow-up chapbook to State of Grace and EROTIC: New & Collected Poems will both be published in 2019. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.

Image: Patchwork by Lisa Segal. Mixed Media. 8 x 8 inches. 2006. By permission.

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