ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Verse Daily, Plume, Rattle, Diode, Pirene’s Fountain, Cleaver, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los Angeles, Duende, Hobart, and elsewhere. She’s the author of four poetry collections; How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). Her photographs are published worldwide. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
Also by Alexis Rhone Fancher:
Junkie Wife
Enter Here
State of Grace: The Joshua
Elegies
How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
I Was Hovering Just Below the Hospital Ceiling, Contemplating My Death
My Body is a Map of Scars
A girl with good legs wears dresses, my blind date sighs over dinner.
My body is a minefield. My body is liability, is albatross.
The gash across my eyebrow where nothing grows.
The criss-cross that mars my rebuilt leg;
how full-length mirrors avoid me.
I chew prime rib thoughtfully, make 2 trips to the salad bar on my ugly legs.
My body is betrayal. My body is stain, is renegade.
The sad limp. The gouge at the base of my throat.
I order an after-dinner cognac. Then another.
My body is car crash. My body is plunder.
My body/Not my body.
I watch his eyes disappear into the long-legged perfection of a girl in a tiny skirt,
the green of a ripe avocado.
No lattice-laced scars furrow her past and future.
I dream a lover blind to trauma.
Look at my palm; see how the lifeline ends and then restarts?
“My Body is a Map of Scars” recollects a cruel blind date. I was floundering after a life-changing car accident, and wanted desperately to be the perfect, beautiful girl I was before, all the while knowing that was impossible. My date’s blunt comment brought it all into focus. Although I’ve thought about that evening a hundred times, this is the first time I’ve written it.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
