He’d be forty soon.
Unimaginable.
I do it anyway.

Poem © 2020 and photograph © 2009
by Alexis Rhone Fancher. All rights reserved.

Artist’s Commentary

The photo above was shot in Marina del Rey, CA on January 4, 2009. I love crows. Such big brains in small bodies! my grandmother used to say. Like it was their special curse. I often photograph and write about crows.* There’s a large murder of them here in San Pedro. They congregate in a giant tree outside my studio and entertain me with their games and flight.

*An example: June Gloom, republished online in KYSO Flash (Issue 12) from Rhone Fancher’s chapbook The Dead Kid Poems (2019)

Alexis Rhone Fancher

is the author of five books of poetry and photography: Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018); How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart-stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014); and three books published by KYSO Flash Press: State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015) and its companion chapbook, The Dead Kid Poems (2019); and Enter Here (2017), a full-length collection of photographs and erotic poems.

Rhone Fancher’s writing has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and appears in more than 100 literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2016, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, Rattle, The MacGuffin, Slipstream, Hobart, Cleaver Magazine, Poetry East, Fjords Review, Rust + Moth, Pirene’s Fountain, Askew and KYSO Flash.

Her photographs have been published worldwide, including spreads in Diaphanous, KYSO Flash, The Lummox, Serving House Journal, River Styx, and Rogue Agent, and on the covers of Chiron Review, Heyday Magazine, Nerve Cowboy, Pithead Chapel, The Mas Tequila Review, Witness and two KYSO Flash anthologies (2015, and the 2018 volume, Accidents of Light).

A lifelong Angeleno, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. From the S-curves of Topanga and the sprawling beaches of the Westside, to the stunning views of downtown L.A. from her previous loft studio, her beloved city can be construed as another character in her work. She and her husband now live on the cliffs of San Pedro, a sleepy beach community 20 miles from their former digs in DTLA. They still have an extraordinary view.

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audio/

alexis [at] lapoetrix [dot] com