Fox Frazier-Foley's first full-length poetry collection, The Hydromantic Histories (Bright Hill Press, 2015), was selected by Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord as winner of the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award. Her chapbook Exodus in X Minor (Sundress Publications, 2014) won the Sundress Publication Chapbook Prize. She has edited two anthologies: one of poetry, titled Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016) and Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet Editions, 2016). She founded and run the indie-lit micropress Agape Editions (http://agapeeditions.com), an imprint of Sundress Publications dedicated to publishing visionary literature. Her current projects include the Tough Gal Tarot deck, which she is co-creating with the poet Hoa Nguyen. She has a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and her scholarly work focuses on the confluence of violence, spirituality, and femininity that has generated a distinct aesthetic in genre-defiant work by contemporary female and non-binary authors and artists.

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Also by Fox Frazier-Foley: Agape Editions The Hydromantic Histories Exodus in X Minor As the Raven-Haired Seer Enters Her Teenage Years, Two Slightly Older Girls in Town Are Tortured and Killed by Their Neighbor, Who Allegedly Commits Suicide in Jail Immediately After His Arrest

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men called my body bounty groaned in treasured thirst for my diaphonous laughter's luxurious curve my delicate hands lighter touch lighter eyes lighter hair lighter skin easier to control a living specter Yes take me with you I laughed to muscled sailors you will not find me superfluous my fluid charm a gambler's game my lush hunt all mellifluous my moaning always naiant ultimatum who would claim me toughest want me most callous grasp me more than I could crave embraced from all sides now as a ship capsized in waves Blessed Mother drew me like a riptide to cathedral where I wept beat my breast kissed the earth & wrapped myself in waters Jordan no acquittal but the magic of loosed guilt re-constellated my heart & bodied vessel beneath a hallowed spittle of forgiving stars harlotry's autonomy & nascent craving grace guided my own small boat across the unlit waves bounty turned to font of arrows in the desert I was transformed wild brutes hunted hawked & hounded my body for sustenance or sport I howled my hymns & singing spun skin~clad cyclone through blistering sandy vales and many times in desert gorges my elusion paled & shadowed like singed lace I fought each creature dirty ivory eyetooth and hooked claw and each one bore my face learned Bible verse ecstatic song by heart and bit my monthly bitter apple from the Vine of Sodom dark as that bride of the vineyards trying sublimate my bone to breath blood conversion to vapor I grew withered welcoming my hair in sun's possession whitened feral wool as Revelation's Son nature~shorn & turned to travelled warrior one untamed cloud to cache the breath of God awakened one night to unfamiliar chords of consciousness hummed by the LORD to his humble servant prayed and walked across the Jordan's moonlit waves to receive the monk in stranded rowboat whose waver sought my stays his basket of water~ soaked lentils rich figs & candied dates I could not eat, for Spirit guards the heart unpolluted but with my fingertips I grazed his gifts & tendered in their grace as he cleansed my earth-burned soles by virginal weeping his timorous hands bequeathed me his tattered cloak olive brown & green poor soul could not have known a single flamingo's tongue in the world of all I'd seen. I blessed him & at his departure returned to my home on my knees castled reverie Mother calling down the psalms that gleamed her voice scything in me to cleave apart like hay my remaining raw scraps of body in prayer I learned to rise again in her love's bounty rise away

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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