when her son is dead seven years

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

after a photograph by the author, “woman/dance 4”

1.

a woman is dancing on the moon,

a barefoot adagio of lilting beams.

she didn’t know the light was so addictive.

her feet are cooking.

her arms are empty.

she thinks there is someone to feed.

2.

a woman is dancing on a cake plate

in her kitchen

call her angel food. she skirts the frosting’s edge

skates straight to the bone-white middle.

she has a persistent memory.

she has a penchant for truth.

she has a life that is slipping away.

3.

a woman is skating barefoot on her sorrow

her brain awash in the smell of his skin,

her arms shackled to the stars, a

pirouette of unmet promises

regret. if she blames it on herself

she can fix it.

4.

a woman is taking her dead boy’s eyes

to the moon

she wants to show him the whole earth

before he finally gets some sleep.

5.

a woman is sleepwalking on the moon,

stardust clinging to her heels.

she’s carrying life inside her

a luminescent, big-bellied Madonna.

she once loved a Russian poem

about a pregnant girl, chasing the moon;

but now she’s forgotten who wrote it

and how the poem ends.

she just keeps chasing the moon.

and the moon, with her big belly, complicit,

out in the darkness, lighting the way. 

* * * * *

©Alexis Rhone Fancher 2015, "when her son is dead seven years" was first published in Blotterature and nominated for Best of The Net, 2015. It is also part of her collection State of Grave: The Joshua Elegies (KYSO Flash Press, 2015).

L.A. poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The 

American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los 

Angeles, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She’s the author of 5 poetry collections; How I 

Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), Enter 

Here (2017), Junkie Wife (2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (2019). EROTIC, New & Selected, 

publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 

nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com