Austin Alexis | Sunday Evenings

Sunday Evenings

 

Dishes whimpered to be washed.

After that task, she swept the bathroom floor,

then swept the kitchen floor

and swept the needy kitchen floor again.

Most evenings, long boring chores

shoved toward her, even stalked her.

But one night per week

salvation graciously glided down:

the Sunday night opera on the radio,

allowing her to be a duchess for three hours

or an Ethiopian princess,

or a playboy, or a magical flute.

Her hands gracenoted themselves

out of the kitchen sink.

 

She let her husband toss and snore

under a sea of Sunday newspaper.

She let her feral kids play tent in their beds.

Her makeshift living room drapes

evolved into velvet stage curtains.

The perfume of an elegant audience

arose from her dusty carpets.

Everyone keeps a life jacket,

half buried, yet accessible,

and she had hers.

_______________________________

Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014), the winner of 20th annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada, Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems. His work appears in Barrow Street, The Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Otoliths (Australia), and in several anthologies. He earned Honorable Mention in the 91st Annual Writer’s Digest Competition (Script: Stage Play or TV/Movie, 2022) and Flash Fiction of the Month (May 2020) from Great Weather for MEDIA. Previously, he’s received a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholarship, a Millay Colony for the Arts Residency, and an Allen Ginsberg Award Honorable Mention. Some of his work has been translated into French, Portuguese and Japanese. He lives in Manhattan.
[Photo Credit: Linda Lerner]

Austin Alexis | Replay & Seeing Twilight

Replay

I slide down the memory of you
hoping the ride will never end.
Yet I sense one day
I’ll be too old to recall
your jokes, your jaw’s attractive shape,
my fascination with your insights.

At least for now, you live
in an orange haze of twilight
at the front of my mind
where I keep what I cherish,
though I know all of that is fading,
slowing, dissolving into night

Seeing Twilight

The air is polished pink,
then orange, then scarlet
at the shore
as dusk ages into evening.
“You’re missing the sunset”
a person says to a sleeping friend
who wakes, sits upright
on a lumpy beach sheet
to spot the orange ball
knelling into the sea,
yielding to Time and Nature,
since it is part of both.


_______________________________

Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, Madgett Poetry Award, 2014) and two previously published chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. Recent flash fiction, poetry, reviews, and plays have appeared in Home Planet News Online, Unstamatic, The Avocet, Point of View, and Long Island Sounds (an anthology). He has work forthcoming in Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing. He served recently as a panelist for the Bronx Council on the Arts. He lives in Manhattan.

Austin Alexis | Accident?

Accident?

In a compact field, green as Ireland,
a small plane stuttered and crashed.
Like expected mail that never arrives,
two anticipated people perished
in crackling, unpredictable flames.
A dog, the only survivor,
yelped, barked, limped away,
its continued life a message
no rescue team could decode.

_______________________________________________

Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, Madgett Poetry Award, 2014) and two previously published chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. Recent flash fiction, poetry, reviews, and plays have appeared in Home Planet News Online, Unstamatic, The Avocet, Point of View, and Long Island Sounds (an anthology). He has work forthcoming in Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing. He served recently as a panelist for the Bronx Council on the Arts. He lives in Manhattan.