Hyena, by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse), by Leonora Carrington (Mexico, b. England) 1937

Hyena

"I'm like a hyena, I get  into the garbage cans. I have an insatiable curiosity.” 
Leonora Carrington

That camel toe beckons from her white jodhpur pants like an invitation, but of course, it’s not. 
Instead, she extends her hand to the hyena’s toothy mouth, sits in the blue chair, the colour of its 
eyes. Out the window, a galloping white mare, forest-bound. You’re that horse, Leonora says. 
I’ve set you free. And she? The hyena, she sighs. She paints herself as hermaphrodite, her 
elongated clit, that trio of dugs hanging from her belly. Today when she reaches for me, I see 
who’s coming. Dark and cunning. Like her avatar. So unlike yesterday, when we lay together in 
the high grass, the thin September light, straw yellow, her face shading mine. You’re ravishing, I 
said; she did not believe me. I stroked the wild hair from her forehead, planted kisses on her 
pulsing throat, tugged those white pants down past her hips. Mercurial, intent on pleasure. How 
can I not adore her? I open like a filleted animal. Don’t play me, Leonora warns, when I gush 
over the horse, delight in how she portrays me. See the smudge, lower left? She points to a smear 
at the painting’s edge where a figure once lived. I decided I didn’t like her any more. It could 
have been you. 

Alexis Rhone Fancher

This poem first appeared in The Pedestal Magazine.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, Cleaver, Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, 2023 (MacQueen’s Publishing); BRAZEN, 2023 (NYQ Books); and DUETS,  (2022) an illustrated, ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins, published by  Harbor Editions. Alexis’s photographs are featured worldwide including the covers of The Pedestal Magazine, Witness, Heyday, Pithead Chapel, and The Mas Tequila Review. A multiple  Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, you can find her at: www.alexisrhonefancher.com