AnaphoraLovers and Drag Queens. By Austin Alexis 2007;16 pp; Poets Wear Prada Press,533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030. $6.25. |
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Lovers and Drag Queens is a
clear-eyed, queer exploration of urban
characters and dilemmas from
the perspective of the talented African-American
New York Poet, playwright, and fiction writer,
Austin Alexis. In free verse and prose poems,
Alexis offers an enticing palette
of ordinary and outré people who
populate New York, including the
sexually ambiguous cop in “Eyes,”
the “Call Girl at 5 AM,” the “Drag
Queen,” the “Bronx Woman,” and
the murderous “psychopath.”
Utilizing anaphora reminiscent of
Walt Whitman, Alexis celebrates a
gospel choir in “Gospel”:
And the gospel choir swayed
and the gospel members
hummed in harmony...
and the singers’ black faces
shone against
their loose white angel robes,
and the organ revved up like a
preacher
the congregation loved...
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Alexis also used anaphora in the
one poem clearly outside the city,
“The Villagers, 2005”: “They were
trying to say/ that gayness is
wrong,/ that their rules rule,/ that
they own/ the world’s corrosive poi-
son:/ power.” Far from a celebration,
this poem comments on “an
African village...[where] a man was
stoned to death because of his sexual
orientation,” as the explanatory
note says.
Alexis also remembers another killer of gay men in “H.I.V.” And he delicately explores troubled lovers, male and female, in such poems as “Choices,” “Love Poem,” and “Dilemma.” Lovers and Drag Queens contains an intriguing variety of poems in its sixteen pages: a fine chapbook, well worth perusing. |