Photo by W.A. LeVine
On Sunday, September 27, 2020, at 4:30 pm. Village Poets will meet on Zoom instead of the Bolton Hall Museum (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042). The invitation is below. We will feature two amazing artists: poet and photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher. The reading will include open mike segments.
INVITATION TO VILLAGE POETS ON ZOOM
Topic: Village Poets Present A.R. Fancher
Time: Sep 27, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Email request for link to: Maja@moonrisepress.com
This presentation is partly sponsored by the Dignity Health Foundation, through a grant for "Close to Nature" Project for Phoenix Houses of Los Angeles, with the California State Poetry as one of the collaborating partners.
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, The New York Times, Petrichor, The MacGuffin, Plume, Tinderbox, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los Angeles, Pirene’s Fountain, Cleaver, Glass, Rust + Moth, Duende, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Her books include: How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen & other heart stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and The Dead Kid Poems, (2019), all published by KYSO Flash Press. In 2018 Moon Tide Press published Junkie Wife, an autobiographical chapbook chronicling Alexis’s first, disastrous marriage.
She’s been published in over 60 anthologies, including the best-selling Nasty Women Poets (Lost Horse Press, 2017), Terrapin Books’ A Constellation of Kisses, (2019),and Antologia di poesia femminile americana contemporanea, (Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, 2018). Her photographs have been published worldwide, including the covers of Witness, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Heyday, and Pithead Chapel, and a spread in River Styx. A multiple Pushcart Prize, Best Short Fiction, and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis has been poetry editor of Cultural Weekly since late 2012. She and her husband live 20 miles outside of downtown L.A., in a small beach community overlooking the Pacific.They have an extraordinary view.
A.R. Fancher Self-Portrait
No, he did not look natural in his coffin.
He is not in a better place.
Don’t compare your pain to mine. Your dog
getting hit by a truck is not the same.
You really don’t know how I feel.
Don’t say you’re devastated.
Does it always have to be about you?
Don’t ask me about Fentanyl.
Don’t tell me not to dwell.
Don’t minimize my loss.
My boy is not better off dead.
For once, let’s say it like it is:
He did not pass away.
He died.
There is no plan.
Don’t say he is at peace.
Silence is good. A hug.
Tell me you have no words.
Or tell me stories of that summer
he rode the bulls in Ogden,
all that life tightly in his grip.
for K.S-B.
Honorable Mention, Beyond Baroque Poetry Contest, 2019, Judged by Diane Seuss
Photo by A.R. Fancher
CRUEL CHOICES
When my husband’s two grown daughters are in town, the three of them go to the movies, or play pool. Share dinner every night. Stay out late. I haven’t seen my stepdaughters since my son’s funeral in 2007. When people ask, I say nice things about the girls, as if we had a relationship. When people ask if I have children I change the subject. Or I lie, and say no. Or sometimes I put them on the spot and tell them yes, but he died. They look aghast and want to know what happened.Then I have to tell them about the cancer. Sometimes, when the older daughter, his favorite, is in town, and she and my husband are out together night after night, I wonder what it would be like if that was me, and my boy, if life was fair, and, rather than my husband having two children and I, none, we each had one living child. His choice which one to keep. Lately when people ask, I want to lie and say yes, my son is a basketball coach; he married a beautiful Iranian model with kind eyes, and they live in London with their twin girls who visit every summer; the same twins his girlfriend aborted with my blessing when my son was eighteen, deemed too young for fatherhood, and everyone said there would be all the time in the world.
First published in ASKEW, 2016, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, 2017. Winner, Pangolin Review Poetry Contest, and nominated again for the Pushcart Prize in 2018 by Pangolin Review.
Photo by A.R. Fancher
REGINA HIGGINS
Regina Higgins lives in West Covina, grew up in Los Angeles, and carries Southern roots from the city of Memphis. She expresses herself creatively through poetry, art and jewelry making. She began writing seriously at The World Stage Anansi Writer’s Workshop in Leimert Park, in 2001, where the community of writers encouraged her in truth-telling and witness. Regina’s poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Voices from Leimert Park: Redux. She has collaborated in the creation of several jazz and spoken word CDs. She has published two chapbooks, and has featured through the Southern California venues. Her performative, passionate poetry style is full of love, humor and everyday life issues, expressed in a voice unique to her lived experience.
MAGNOLIA
Summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping and the cotton is high
Yo daddy's rich and yo Ma is good looking
So hush little baby, don't you cry
She could tell he wasn't from around here
As she sashayed across the floor
Demanding attention
Her demographics read like honky tonk
Lids at half mast, too sheer dress
Slinky backside, thick lips
She was double-butt situated
He was just another lonely soldier
From somewhere between Georgia
And a dog day afternoon
Clueless as to why she was shoeless
Her feet caked with red clay
He asked her to be his private dancer
As the music began, she moved her hips
Swaying to another tune
Only she could hear
Her voice all over him
A southern drawl dripped from her lips
Like fatback in a pot of mustard greens
She said her name was Magnolia
But she was more Venus Fly Trap
Read him like pulp in her fiction
He didn't have to read between the lines
By the end of the night he was hooked
All for the price of a taxi-dance ticket
Regina Higgins
Since the poem starts with a quote from "Summertime" - a lullaby by George Gershwin from his opera "Porgy and Bess" here's its version by Ella Fitzgerald, recorded in 1968:
During the Reading we will also celebrate the publication of the Village Poets Anthology
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