Alex Stolis
Bullet Proof Vests & Rolex Watches
NYT Headline March 5, 2026
It was their summer of love, our winter of discontent. They played Bonnie & Clyde, she was the Bride & he was Frank, runnin’ & gunnin’ from Portland to Minneapolis, Eastern Seaboard to the Gulf. It all happened on unceded land under an unclaimed sky, you & I fortressed against the cold; snow drifted yard, ice-jammed roof, one week from springing forward & final day of cancer meds. While the flashes banged & the choppers chopped we fed the last hungry deer, saved our memories for the famine, eyes starved for beauty. Won’t be long until the next war starts; the rich will get slicker, poor will get drunker; the gangsters will rob grocery stores, steal from the needy. We'll take that sadness, a sliver among slivers, & create our own weather. Our bodies will become the gray sun fighting to shine; the beat of our pulse & every atom-size bit of us tethered to the breeze blowing in our window, refracted in the notes of The Beatles’ Blackbird streaming from the speakers & we will
see/feel/breathe the air beyond heaven, to the home they can never touch. Where history blinks less than a milli-second, stretches infinite to the place cancer sheds its skin & bullets fall helpless.
see/feel/breathe the air beyond heaven, to the home they can never touch. Where history blinks less than a milli-second, stretches infinite to the place cancer sheds its skin & bullets fall helpless.
At The Mirror Lounge
“Kokomo”is the WORST Beach Boys song,
it isn’t even a REAL Beach Boys song,
it’s a Mike Love’s Beach Boy COVER Band song.
This is what JeffBob is yelling as he kicks the jukebox.
I tell him I don’t disagree & can’t argue with him
even though I’m the one who put the quarter in & punched it up.
Kim the waitress, the one who told my girlfriend she slept with me
runs over, eye-rolls him quiet, says knock that shit off
or he’s 86’d for good this time.
I didn’t sleep with her/don’t remember sleeping with her
& have no clue why she would tell anyone,
much less my girlfriend.
JeffBob is trying to unplug the machine
when Pink Houses comes on & all of a sudden he’s the baby
who's been given a bottle.
He loves Mellencamp & will pick a fight
with anyone who says Johnny Cougar is nothing
but a dimestore ripoff Springsteen.
Kim says she’s gonna cut us off, but never does.
Ray the bartender twirls his finger around signalling last call;
we overtip Kim, JeffBob hugs her, lifts her off the floor
& for one more night we manage.
it isn’t even a REAL Beach Boys song,
it’s a Mike Love’s Beach Boy COVER Band song.
This is what JeffBob is yelling as he kicks the jukebox.
I tell him I don’t disagree & can’t argue with him
even though I’m the one who put the quarter in & punched it up.
Kim the waitress, the one who told my girlfriend she slept with me
runs over, eye-rolls him quiet, says knock that shit off
or he’s 86’d for good this time.
I didn’t sleep with her/don’t remember sleeping with her
& have no clue why she would tell anyone,
much less my girlfriend.
JeffBob is trying to unplug the machine
when Pink Houses comes on & all of a sudden he’s the baby
who's been given a bottle.
He loves Mellencamp & will pick a fight
with anyone who says Johnny Cougar is nothing
but a dimestore ripoff Springsteen.
Kim says she’s gonna cut us off, but never does.
Ray the bartender twirls his finger around signalling last call;
we overtip Kim, JeffBob hugs her, lifts her off the floor
& for one more night we manage.
Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres 2024 by Bottlecap Press. He lives in Hudson Valley, New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.
