IMMIGRANTS SPEAK TO THE NEW PRESIDENT

by Austin Alexis

We flee poverty
the way the U.S.A. will,
at some point,
seek escape from you.
You are to us
as a flaw is
when it mars a $1000 bill.
We so need that capital,
that liberating opportunity,
that expanse of fertile green.
If only you didn't shed
your blot on its face,
rendering it nightmarish,
its once-prized images and concepts
now garbled, unreadable.

Austin Alexis has been published in The Ledge: Poetry and Fiction, J Journal, Chiron Review, The Lyric, Home Planet News, TheNewVerse.News, and the anthologies Rabbit Ears: TV Poems and Poets 4 Paris (bilingual edition). His full-length collection is Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014), and he has two previous chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada.

THE MOON'S SURFACE

by Austin Alexis


Devastated long ago by asteroids,
and now stark—
a grim, gray landscape filled with unease.
That's the damn sad moon in bereavement,
resembling the American spirit
after one-too-many catastrophes:
a harbor blasted by bombs dropped from the sky;
a mass shooting
and then another, another;
an attack—terrorist or otherwise—
on a random June morning.
Ragged, scarred, the moon replicates the American soul
stumbling from one tragedy to another,
another, and the another.



Austin Alexis's full-length collection is Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014).  He has poetry and fiction most recently in the anthology Rabbit Ears: TV Poems and in the journals Home Planet News, J Journal, TheNewVerse.News, and Chiron Review. 

TERRORISM AND ITS MODES

by Austin Alexis

I compare it to a wintry night:
kale and other crops won't grow:
its land sits barren, dry.
It is defined by lies.
The bodies and shards it scatters
disintegrate in The New York Times.
Its causes it fails to justify
so its effects lack resonance.
By definition it is a cry
whose message, unheard, belies
what it wants to say.
Unpersuasive, it never asks why
its arguments don't make loud sounds
like shopping malls crashing to the ground.


Austin Alexis has published in or has work forthcoming in The Long Islander, Home Planet News, Paterson Literary Review, The New Verse News, The Ledge and other journals. His full-length collection is Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press). His chapbook is For Lincoln & Other Poems (Poets Wear Prada Press). He teaches composition and literature at a CUNY college in Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan, New York City.

AN IMMIGRANT'S JOURNEY

by Austin Alexis

Immigrant children at Ellis Island gather around a toy horse in 1920 (NYC Vintage Images). Source: The Atlantic

A sea

she will paddle upon

or attempt a desperate swim in

while hoping to shoo off sharks.

A mountain 

she will hike through,

braving mudslides,

slicing through brambles.

A desert

she will trek across,

stepping over rattlesnakes

as she swallows fear of starvation

and guides her children

to reach milk and honey

even if the milk is sour,

the honey bitter.

Austin Alexis is the author of the full-length collection Privacy Issues (Lotus Press/Wayne State University Press) and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, Paterson Literary Review and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Poetry Pacific (Canada) and The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly.