Austin Allen James is a Visiting Professor at Texas Southern University. He has taught at TSU since the Fall of 2012. Austin was a committee member in 2016 charged with creating a “Professional Writing” concentration that includes five creative writing classes. Austin is also a visual artist, sculptor, and furniture designer.

Blurry Lanes

Time shifts like a limousine
without seats, a rainbow of gray dots.

The spin of the slot machine’s
eye pierces the scent of ether.

You found me on a stage of expression—
face flushed with Vegas oxygen,

and your smile filled the gaps
along the thespian curve.

Let us cage the image of you
and me as we enter the next casino.

The Next Stop Is

A signal for an extension of the respite,
of the sun’s silken position in an orbit.

As I grasp for the ascension of sight
in this solar decline, a silver light is on my skin.

The age of an edge is burnt into the azure.
I remember that salt stings the eyes,

and yet, it is my turn to exit the terminal.

Diamond Eyes

People gravitate toward beauty—
a seepage that oozes through the space
of a street, a neighborhood,
a city of silent halcyon.

Magnolias burst bright like fruit placed in bowls,
disinterred by offspring centuries
in the making, a vestry of charm
discovered by Dharma— a peninsula

stunned toward an edge. Town
squares and bungalows— the rooted slope
of families cloistered by foothills that slowly creep
toward the farmers’ salt— unravel the terrain

and deliver a gentry of firm heels.
With the valve fully open,
the peninsula shifts, and the neighborhoods
succumb to a nudge across the causeway.

The Death of Jesse

If I am a killer, is it a thing? Grandpa James
remembers a Bible with Jesse’s name printed
under the cover— a hurricane wheel-ship, an anchor
lantern, and a hull of cowboy carnage saturated with whiskey.
The screen door opens to an exploding dandelion—
a poisonous mushroom that takes the closing breath
of Jesse’s blood. In Starkville, we still find red seeds in the dust.