Enter Here by Alexis Rhone Fancher KYSO Flash Press, 2017 When I was getting my MFA, I did my final paper on erotica: writing it, reading it, how difficult it is to successfully create it. And I do believe it is difficult to successfully write sexuality without slipping into the gratuitous or cliché. Many people try, with disastrous results. How I wish I knew Alexis Rhone Fancher then, how I wish Enter Here existed then! What an absolute example of doing it right. This collection offers the perfect blend of the erotic, but also the power, vulnerability, and strength that can be found in not only the speaker of these poems, but in all of us. Poems such as "When the Handsome, Overgrown Samoan Boy Stands Again in Front of Your Glass-Walled Beach House in Venice & Begins to Masturbate, Never Taking His Eyes Off You…" and "Tuesday Nights, Room 28 of the Royal Motel on Little Santa Monica" lend to a feeling of voyeurism, as if the reader is hiding in the speaker's closet, witnessing things we should not be witnessing, even if the speaker knows we're there. Consider the prose poem "Doggy Style Christmas": "It reminded me how much I missed you, how doggy style was our favorite position, the one where you achieved maximum penetration, I didn't have to look at you, and every day was Christmas". It's not all sex, though. The devastating loss depicted in "I Was Hovering Just Below the Hospital Ceiling, Contemplating My Death" is heart wrenching ("So I hover on the Sistine ceiling/ of the ICU, undecided, my dead lover's/ hand reaching for me/ like God stretched for Adam"), the anguish doubling when you turn the page to the author's note, explaining this poem was written about a car accident that killed her fiancé and unborn child. "this small rain" is a love letter to Los Angeles — I'll admit, one of my own obsessions ("in this drought-wracked city,/ this small rain settles on the hierba seca/ sleeps under freeways/ plays the lotto/ is unlucky in love"). Scattered throughout the book is Fancher's own photography, once more offering a peek into the world of Enter Here. At over 100 pages, Enter Here offers the reader plenty to digest, and is a wonderful collection — however, if sex makes you blush, maybe it's best to read in the privacy of your own home (or bedroom!). Visit Alexis Rhone Fancher's Website Visit KYSO Flash Press' Website

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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