Templar Phoenix Literary Review

Templar Phoenix Literary Review - Volume 1, Number 2 - Summer 2000

ALEX STOLIS

Four Cinquains

I touch
your hair, plaited
with silver bands of Spring.
Persephone is envious
of you.

You wake,
hyacinth eyes.
A dusky camisole
sketches dim pantomimes of you.
I sleep.

Thunder-
heads buried deep
in the pillow of Zeus
maliciously wake slumbering
Hera.

Moonlight
swims from your eyes.
You are Scheherazade -
a thousand and one memories
you weave.

Copyright © 2000 by Alex Stolis

About the Poet

Alex Stolis was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. He spent 4 years attending the University of Minnesota with the intention of going on to law school. Instead he fell into the hospitality industry. He spent 20 years there, the last 10 as a Food & Beverage Director for major hotel chains. He quit this career in 1998 to go back to school, not for law, but addiction counseling. He has no formal education in writing poetry except life. At fifteen he was introduced to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Jim Carroll, T.S. Eliot, among others, introducing him to the world and life of words. He took a ten year hiatus from writing to live the life of some of his literary heroes; he began writing again in the fall of 1999. Alex has been published both on-line & in print including Stirring: A Literary Collection, Morella, FZQ, Miller's Pond, Voyage (UK), Unwound, Grey Book Press, Poetry Motel, and Templar Phoenix Literary Review. He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife, two children and two black Labs. He is thoroughly convinced he has been sentenced to live in the suburbs as penance for sins of his past life.

E-Mail: LexStolis@aol.com