Austin Robert Smith

PANIC

Strange how fast panic subsides
into the depths it rose from
how the waters it whitened and troubled
grow tranquil again like death
beds made for the next patient
only the dark shape of it in the water
like a boat seen from below
keeps us from the convenient fiction
that it will never appear again
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SELFIE STICK

To be seen clearly
we must put some distance
between ourselves
and what regards us.

Hence this space
we've created and that collapses
neatly into itself
for ease of carrying.

SOAP OPERAS

Those summer days the sun would raise
the smell of warm carpet and cleaning
chemicals and dust mites would swim
like plankton in the baleen-like beams
she’d put soap operas on for company
while she cleaned I remember
their peculiar muteness
like when your ears won’t pop
after the descent
so caught up were they
in their dramas they didn’t notice
me watching them
sometimes she’d take a yellow cloth
soft as baby clothes
and wipe the static and dust
off the screen
but their expressions didn’t change
for all her waving
their lives uninvolved with ours
I grew to dread their sudden intrusions
their voices rising in argument
as they paced a living room I never saw
anyone dusting but that was always
so clean I don’t believe I believed
it was real but then again
when would that ever matter to me?
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