Austin Alexis

Merce Cunningham Event

Dance is ephemeral
each step stays
as it disappears....

These movements exist as
fey flights of hummingbirds,
dangling life of dragonflies
magnified, then erased....

Simultaneous sequence.
Quick glitterings.
Shards of glass
enjoying their fragmentation
as an audience sifts through
this elaborate puzzle,
letting set pieces fall
wonderfully out of place.

Austin Alexis has published in Barrow Street, The Writer, The Journal (Ohio State University Press), Six Sentences, Clockwise Cat, Tryst and elsewhere. His second chapbook, from Poets Wear Prada, is forthcoming this spring. He received a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Scholarship, and was a finalist for a New Millennium Writing Award.