Alexis Rhone Fancher: Hermanas

You’re the same, you two, J, my lover, said. Of course you feel an affinity. I stared at the Frida Kahlo self-portrait in his hands. Frida’s soulful sweetness stared back. You know, that devastating painting of her in a metal corset, her spinal column more steel and cement than cartilage and bone. After J left for work, I stared at myself in our full-length mirror. Struck a Frida-esque pose, and then another. I imagined her unrelenting pain. Where did it manifest? I already knew.

I’ve traced my own pain, from start to now, worn that path into a rut. Maybe J was right. Like Frida, my pain stemmed from a crash, each of us pierced and wounded. Each of us, scarred for life. Frida would approve of your ex votos and retablos, J said. I read that she worked small, mostly on tin, like your collection. One more thing I didn’t know about Kahlo. Our shared, painful sorrow, yes. And now, our shared passion for art on tin, like my hoard; dozens of retablos of gratitude, or desperate prayer, beseeching El Señor or La Virgen to spare a spouse, return a dying child to health, banish a meddling mother-in-law, or find a lost dog. 

Did you know Frida had polio as a child? That one leg was thinner than the other? She never stood a chance. The polio. The bus accident. Diego. In her memoirs Frida wrote that of these three events that shaped her life, Diego was by far the worst. J beams. He’s done the Frida research for me. One more way to prove his love, if only I didn’t get stuck in it, unable to find my way out.

That would be me, Frida’s twin in her painting of the two Fridas. We’d hold hands, we sisters of pain, my car crash at twenty a mirror of her shattering wounding. Pierced, the two of us. Pieced back together, enmeshed. Look how she shields the viewer from her lower, damaged half. Much as I do in my self-portraits. And for the same reason. Shield the viewer from the devastation, pretend everything is perfect, upstairs and down.

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Copyright 2025 Alexis Rhone Fancher

Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Plume, Diode,The Pedestal Magazine, Duende, Vox Populi, Gargoyle, Elysium Review, and elsewhere. Her photos are published worldwide. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, (MacQueens) and BRAZEN. (NYQ). A coffee table book of over 100 of Alexis’ photographs of Southern California poets will be published by Moon Tide Press in early 2025. She calls the Mojave Desert home.