She’s a sloe-eyed Madonna in a black uniform, refilling napkin holders, topping off salt shakers, funneling ketchup from one half-full bottle to another. I, among the faithful, come to worship at her station, always sitting in her section. I’m convinced she’s secretly the Virgin of Feodorovskaya, venerated icon of the upper Volga, the way she must have looked first thing in the morning, brewing coffee, sans Byzantine jewels and heavy crown.
She’s the patron saint of diners, the dispenser of special orders shimmering behind the counter, a saint tethered to the linoleum by tired booths and chipped Formica. When she takes my order, I bow my head, genuflect; her tangled, familiar accent a benediction. When she sees me eye her worn paperback, peeking out of her pocket, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, she fingers the author’s cover photo with reverence.
I want to remove the pins from her hair, loosen the tight bun, let the blunt wisps fall to her chin, narrowing her high-cheekboned visage. I want to worship at the pout of her lips, nuzzle at her neck’s altar. I want to slip her uniform off her shoulders, bury myself in her Russian-ness, pull her down next to me in the booth, feed her bits of brisket, dill pickle, baklava, give her sips of my tea.
You’re beautiful! I’ll tell her, but she’ll shake her head. She has no faith in platitudes. I’ll take her photo when she’s not looking. Print it as proof of faith, an 8x10 glossy, then bring it to her, an offering. I, too, am Russian (on my father’s side), I’ll say. I, too, carry Akhmatova in my pocket.
It will be the first time I’ve seen her smile.
Photograph copyrighted © by Alexis Rhone Fancher. All rights reserved.
—Prose and photograph published previously in Diaphanous (July 2918);
both appear here with Rhone Fancher’s permission.
is the author of
How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart-stab poems
(Sybaritic Press, 2014), and two books published by KYSO Flash Press:
State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015) and
Enter Here
(May 2017), a full-length collection of photographs and erotic poems. Her fourth
poetry collection, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), is the story of her
first, disastrous marriage.
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, Plume, Askew,
Tinderbox, Verse Daily, and KYSO Flash.
Her photographs have been published worldwide, including spreads in River Styx,
Heart Online, and Rogue Agent, and on the covers of Heyday Magazine,
Chiron Review, Witness, Nerve Cowboy, Pithead Chapel, The Mas Tequila Review, and
two KYSO Flash anthologies (2015, and the forthcoming 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 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
