Your Pulse Nightclub During the humid Miami night, like a heat-seeking missile you were drawn to the dancing of the hot-spot club, the two-souls sweat: a magnet. Once you began shooting, you couldn’t stop or wouldn’t stop or dared not stop until you yourself were victim. Death by cop became the attraction, the gravitational pull, the force that fueled your desire to die while high on a mission of self-hatred.
—Submitted on 09/27/2022
Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014), winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, The Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Poetica Review, and Dash, as well as in the anthology NYC from the Inside (Blue Light Press, 2022) and elsewhere. He received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.
Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication.
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