KYSO Flash
Knock-Your-Socks-Off Art and Literature
Issue 5: Spring 2016
Ekphrastic Senryu Sequence: 112 words
(Poems + Images)  

Because He Used to Love Her:
A Story in Photographs and Senryu

by Alexis Rhone Fancher
 

The train station. The ex-lover. The long-legged girl.

 

From Because He Used to Love Her, by Alexis Rhone Fancher
1

the duffle holds her
zipped up life; girl on the run
silhouette of fear


high-strung, he called her
a colt in stilettos
bolting in the night

 

 

From Because He Used to Love Her, by Alexis Rhone Fancher
2

she played him, his heart
on her finger, her broken
vows...where was his ring?

 

 

From Because He Used to Love Her, by Alexis Rhone Fancher
3

was that his shadow?
skittish, she feared his revenge—
saw him everywhere

 

 

From Because He Used to Love Her, by Alexis Rhone Fancher
4

her hair like a whip
torturing him now, but once
he did worship her

 

 

From Because He Used to Love Her, by Alexis Rhone Fancher
5

she slips out the gate
he spies a flash of sleekness
her colt legs fleeing


long drink of water
his thirst unquenchable, his
reach beyond the sea

 

Photographs copyrighted © by Alexis Rhone Fancher.
All rights reserved.


Alexis Rhone Fancher
Issue 5, Spring 2016

is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and Other Heart Stab Poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014); and State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (KYSO Flash Press, 2015), which won an Honorable Mention for Poetry in the 2015 Los Angeles Book Festival awards.

Photo Stamp of L.A. Poetrix

Her work appears in Menacing Hedge, Ragazine, Rattle, The MacGuffin, Slipstream, Fjords Review, H_NGM_N, great weather for MEDIA, Chiron Review, and elsewhere. Her poems are published in over 25 American and international anthologies. Her photos are published worldwide. Since 2013, Alexis has been nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes and four Best of the Net awards.

She served as photography editor of Fine Linen Literary Journal until its closure, and is currently poetry editor of Cultural Weekly, where she publishes The Poet’s Eye, a monthly photo essay about her ongoing love affair with Los Angeles.

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audio/

alexis [at] lapoetrix [dot] com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

Saturday Poetry Series Presents: State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies by Sivan Butler-Rotholz in As It Ought to Be (23 January 2016)

No Holding Back: An Interview with Alexis Rhone Fancher by George Wallace in great weather for MEDIA (29 October 2015):

“That I’ve shared my history gives people permission to share theirs. That’s what I like best about what I do; sometimes a poet can give you a safe space to own yourself.”

Interview with Poet Alexis Rhone Fancher by Kathleen Cassen Mickelson in Gyroscope Review (29 January 2016)

How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen: and other heart-stab poems, reviewed by Dan Cuddy in The Lock Raven Review (Volume 11, No. 2, 2015)

The Poet Reads Three Poems, text and audio in Menacing Hedge (Winter 2015); includes the prose poem “Tonight I Dream of My Last Meal with My First Ex-Husband Who Was Both Fickle and Bent”

Six Fancher Poems, which Steve Kowit, former Poetry Editor of Serving House Journal, had chosen for the spring 2015 issue before he passed away in April; all six poems plus poet’s commentaries appear in the SHJ memorial issue.

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