1/6/21 Poems
Inaugural Storm
Priscilla Frake
March 25, 2021
Blizzard of troops at the capitol,
the air tamped and dampened
by the spellbound, snowbound
wait
for something new to be sworn in
come January 20th. Storms migrate
across the continent, spirals of
fury
steered by vague changes in pressure
and the prevailing winds on Facebook
and Twitter. Even dire warnings don’t
stop
crowds from gathering under the scythe
of the virus, and nothing has ever
stopped lies from consorting with
harm.
We wake to a filigree quiet, intricate
snow-covered branches lacing
a corseted sky, but tell me how we
recover
when hospitals are snowed under
and cold exhaustion seeps
into any thaw?
Hope,
like prayer, needs muscle
and tendon, sleeves rolled
at the elbow, and many hands.
Priscilla Frake is the author of Correspondence, a book of epistolary poems. She has work in Verse Daily, Nimrod, The Midwest Quarterly, Medical Literary Messenger, Carbon Culture Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and The New Welsh Review, among others. She lives in Asheville, NC, where she is a studio jeweler.
January 6, 2021: After the Storm
Carol Coffee Reposa
March 21, 2021
Poring over dailies,
Riveted to CNN
Endlessly replaying and rehashing,
I think of Yeats.
Here too things fall apart,
The center nowhere to be found
With broken glass everywhere,
The falconer missing in action.
Here too we see the best
Lack all conviction,
While the worst are full of Fox,
Newsmax, and bile.
After this, I can’t imagine
What shiny new gears
Would have to mesh,
What luminous new words
Some seer could intone,
What clean machine
Suddenly might descend
To sweep the rubble
From our streets and thoughts,
Clear the marble halls of trash
And send the rough beast
Slouching back to his swamp
Finally driving him
Out of Bethlehem
So that a savior
Somehow might be born.
Author of five books of poetry, Carol Coffee Reposa has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, along with three Fulbright/Hays Fellowships for study in Russia, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and of the Voices de la Luna editorial staff, she is the 2018 Texas Poet Laureate.
A Post-Insurrection Love Note
Marilyn Robitaille
March 18, 2021
To Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, Capitol Insurrectionist
Hey, Angeli, I saw all the press
You, bare-chested, painted face
Red, white, and blue for war
Viking hat with fur and horns
You say you marched the ley lines
For insurrection, for chaos in the Chamber
Rising to a higher power, maybe alien
Listening to the Q, to the Q, to the QAnon
Hearing the Trumpet blast that took you
Into oblivion, into conspiracies so crazed
That you believe, hand to God, that you believe
A miracle will take you to another universe
Crazy comes full circle, man
Your Navy service anthrax-ended
Since you refused to take your shot
For now you’re somewhere, parts unknown
Locked up and surely saying shaman prayers
You missed the first full moon of January
The Arizona sunset, desert purple hues
Music blaring from the speakers on your lawn
The neighbor’s grill hot with fish and steak
Savor now that life you led and lost
Locked up, hated by the masses, ridiculed and mocked
A presidential pardon didn’t save you from yourself
So live with it and cultivate your idiotic dreams
Other brain-washed followers, mourn with them
Awash in a vast variety of lies, told and told again
Irony echoes in “lock her up” because now you are
No hope until Trump’s second-coming
I heard you say those insane prayers to him
By that time, heaven help us should it arrive,
The sane among us will be residents of Canada
For now, I do so love to pity you
Marilyn Robitaille is Associate Professor of English at Tarleton State University, a member of the Texas A & M System. She is founding co-editor of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. Her book of illustrated poetry Not by Design: 50 Poems and Images (2018) has been featured in gallery readings with samplings of the original art exhibited. Her work has been included in a variety of poetry anthologies. She is the founder of Romar Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing works that embrace the power of artistic expression, touch the heart, and keep us civilized.
Kneelers’ Insurrection
Thomas Quitzau
March 14, 2021
Many thought ol’ ‘merica truly sucked
But only for periods, if only
For times when our sensibilities, shocked,
Found even courts and constables comely.
Repulsive, some thought, were the stars and stripes
Until they weren’t, racist the banner
Gripped in battle, wars followed by gripes
Balked by journos, squawked by any manner;
Too manly to fly, too white, demanding
Blown where the wind goes, like our opinions
Not worth standing for, protests withstanding
Slapped whiplashed minds of a million minions.
Bloodshed in her name blessed hands across hearts:
Kneel then, pitch her into the fires she starts.
Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.
Calculating the Damage
Milton Jordan
March 14, 2021
We drove out along the old road crumbling
over sand hills and clumps of Johnson grass
around occasional scrub Juniper
where we bought our first house together,
a few miles west of the Pine Belt.
That place sits empty now, the back screen door
hanging loose from one rusted hinge, the windmill
fallen into the water tank, the barn
dismantled for reusable lumber.
The foundation seems solid, but the roof
has collapsed, and the porch no longer
connects to the house where two walls caved in.
Is anything left worth repair? you ask,
and I am unable to answer.
Milton Jordan lives in Georgetown with the musician Anne Elton Jordan. His most recent poetry collection is What the Rivers Gather, SFASU Press, 2020. Milton edited the anthology, No Season for Silence: Texas Poets and Pandemic, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2020.
Two 1/6/21 Haiku
Juan Manuel Pérez
March 11, 2021
if pumpkins could speak
would they protest for justice
systemic carving
a belief system
messages that might lack truth
cult of Saint Fake-News
Juan Manuel Pérez, a Mexican-American poet of indigenous descent and the 2019-2020 Poet Laureate for Corpus Christi, Texas, is the author of several books of poetry including two new books, SPACE IN PIECES (2020) and SCREW THE WALL! AND OTHER BROWN PEOPLE POEMS (2020).
War Is Here
Kathryn Jones
March 8, 2021
We think of war across oceans.
Enemies speak a foreign language,
Worship a different God,
Show contempt for democracy.
We kill and destroy them
In the name of freedom.
Now war is here.
Enemies shout in English,
Mix Molotov cocktails with hate,
Show contempt for democracy.
They kill and destroy us
In the name of freedom.
We live in a time of uncivil war,
Of neighbor fighting neighbor,
Of lies wearing truth’s disguise,
Of mobs chanting “USA! USA!”
While blood pools in marble halls,
In the name of freedom.
Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.
The Infestation
Kathryn Hoerth
March 7, 2021
January 6, 2021
It’s like the time I tried to make believe
that termites weren’t a problem in my yard.
It started with a couple bugs devouring
a rotting stump. I figured, what’s the harm?
A couple termites doing what they do!
So much trouble to remove it, anyway,
like pulling truth out of a liar’s mouth.
Just let them eat in darkness, far away
from me. But termites spread. And soon, unseen,
they started feasting on the wooden fence.
I said I didn’t know, but there were signs:
Crumbling bits of wood, a trail of dirt
that marked their spread, a mound arisen
from the ground. But in my living room,
I could forget about it and convince
myself it wasn’t really happening—
that is, until those alabaster lies,
I mean those termites, went alate and swarmed
in the middle of the afternoon,
flying in the sunlight now, to breach
the sanctum of my home, to burrow deep
into the heartwood and consume the beams.
Now they were in the living room, the kitchen,
in the attic munching on the rafters,
in my bedroom, spreading like a virus,
chewing hollow everything that’s hallowed.
Oh please, I begged to the exterminator,
tell me you can stop this infestation.
Tell me that there’s hope for this old house.
Tell me you can purge these lies, I mean,
the flies from the foundation of our country.
He smiled as if to save me from the truth:
Ma’am, if only you had called me sooner...
Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry collections, including Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots, which won the Helen C. Smith Prize. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Lamar University and Editor-in-Chief of Lamar University Literary Press. Her next poetry collection, Borderland Mujeres, will be released by SFAU Press.
1619 Jamestown
Daryl Ross Halencak
March 4, 2021
In the year of our Lord 1607, I praise willing souls who followed
dreams of freedom, humanity’s potential.
I praise forefathers and mothers who searched for new heaven,
new earth, ripe for equality.
I praise the pearl of great price where settlers snuggled in safe beds
for the first time.
Faith praises answered prayers for a new way of life, smelling fresh air, peace.
Faith found delight.
In the year of our Lord 1619, seekers of better lives,
spiraled into destruction, stumbled into their own type
of tyranny.
Slavery shackled precious human value, and
Puritan beliefs were compromised.
Faith without works is dead.
In the year of our Lord four centuries later,
I cry, I scream, I am angry:
do ”Black Lives Matter,”
do they “say their names,”
do homeless folk live on streets,
do children live in cages?
I question: will despair end, my dear Republic?
Faith without works is dead.
In the year of our Lord in the future,
I long for equality and fraternity.
I long for change anew, democracy for all.
My hymn, our refrain will sing from the highest hill:
One Nation under God Indivisible
with Liberty and Justice
for All.
Daryl Ross Halencak is a poet and writer. His poetry was published in Dragon Poet Review, NonDoc, Cesky Dialog, Elegant Rage and Ceske Stopy. A fourth generation of Foard County, Texas, Daryl and his wife, Jane, live in the rugged and untamed land in the Rolling Plains of Texas.
January 6th Inserection
Jerry Bradley
March 1, 2021
they rose from their chthonic beds that morning
to hear the president, a circumcised Zeus,
endorse the enemies of the state
a legion of mopes and moldwarps
violently bent on preserving
heroic versions of themselves
but Heraclitus understood the betrayal
of sad places, how a man never rises
from the same bed twice
their leader, however, could not calculate
anything beyond the half-life of marriage,
would not guard the very institutions
he had sworn to defend;
it was all Greek to him –
or something so much less
Jerry Bradley is University Professor of English and the Leland Best Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Lamar University. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he is the author of 9 books including Collapsing into Possibility. He is poetry editor of Concho River Review.
January 6, 2021
Yahia Lababidi
February 28, 2021
We live through symbols
and not by bread, alone—
that’s why much can be forgiven,
except the desecration of our Ideal.
Treason defiles our imagination,
a band of thieves storm
a temple of our collective longing,
capital of our intangible heritage.
But they will not steal or break
what they will not see or mend.
The day that line was crossed,
more somnambulists stirred.
Misguided fools shall be forgotten,
but History shall not pardon
that other symbol, a leader, entrusted
to guard what we dream sacred.
Yahia Lababidi, Lebanese-Egyptian-American, is the author of 9 collections of poetry and prose. His new book, Revolutions of the Heart, is preoccupied with transformations: political, cultural and spiritual.
January 6, 2021 American Haiku
Thomas Quitzau
February 25, 2021
Delaware man carries a flag
Upsetting the Capitol sea
Confederately
Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.
Abyss
Jeanie Sanders
February 22, 2021
He is in a boat surrounded by ocean
without a rudder of self protection.
The Sun reflects off his bald head
ringed by his dyed hair. His face
is red from effort and his orange
makeup streams down onto his
expensive suit.
He is busy throwing people overboard.
Sharks gather for every offering.
They bump the boat in their eagerness
to tear apart another victim.
Blood covers the vast unnamed ocean.
The sharks stir it up splattering it
onto the crazed man where it covers
his eyes and mouth as he heaves and throws.
Water sloshes in the bottom of the boat,
ringing the monster who mercilessly lifts
another human sending them into the
hurricane of jaws. This crimson man
is an automaton of greed and evil. Blood circles
lips and finds its way down his throat.
There is no stopping the routine of bend, grab, and fling.
He can’t see his reflection nor smell anything
but a personal miasma of fear. The ocean outside
enters the boat and builds as though it were
a skyscraper rising in increments. A lifetime
of egomania chains the man in place
like Marley’s ghost.
The boat becomes flooded capsizes and descends.
Bubbles float to the surface containing
last words of self love while time
becomes flat as the ocean.
Jeanie Sanders is a poet living in Lytle, Texas. Her poems have been published in The Texas Observer, San Antonio Express News, Texas Poetry Calendar, and other anthologies. Her self-published collection of poetry and photography is titled The Book of the Dead. She also served as editor for the Texas Poetry Calendar 2021.
A Brief History of January 6
Juan Manuel Pérez
February 19, 2021
one early morning
dark clouds of insurrection
heavy with foul speech
American-made
wide spectrum of emotions
rearing implosion
chaos by noon time
devil back to his dwelling
minions to his bid
a graceful nation
once upon a turn was us
lies broken like glass
the capitol falls
overwhelmed by ignorance
enemy within
hang them high they shout
yet none of them to be found
squandered ill choices
late restoration
democracy doth prevailed
harvesting new hope
Juan Manuel Pérez, a Mexican-American poet of indigenous descent and the 2019-2020 Poet Laureate for Corpus Christi, Texas, is the author of several books of poetry including two new books, SPACE IN PIECES (2020) and SCREW THE WALL! AND OTHER BROWN PEOPLE POEMS (2020).
Tale of Two Cities
Jeffrey Taylor
February 15, 2021
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” —MLK
Washington DC, June 2020:
Unarmed peaceful protesters
are met by four uniform rows
of heavily armed and armored
National Guard to keep them
from the open memorial
to Lincoln.
Washington DC, January 6, 2021:
Armed and armored protesters
are greeted by lightly armed,
unarmored Capitol Police unable
to keep them from restricted
chambers in the Capitol. Where
is the National Guard?
An insurrection is not
climbing walls, smashing doors,
looting offices, posing for selfies
for a few hours then retiring
to boast over a few beers.
Riots are not CEOs’ only language
nor those who with
cross-country plane tickets.
Police chiefs and well-paid
politicians are not the unheard.
This is a tantrum
of White Privilege. This
is the voice,
of “Because I can.”
Jeffrey L. Taylor never received higher than a C in English throughout school and college. Through articles in recreational computer journals, he learned to write with rhythm and conciseness, often too concise. In poetry, that is not a problem. Around 1990, poems began waking him in the night. He now writes in the day.
Some Time, Some Storm
Jesse Doiron
February 14, 2021
The fellow down the road
says I am wrong about the tree,
that I should take it down.
“It leans too much this way,” he says,
describing with his hands
an arc across the clouds.
Though blue’s above the cumulus,
he sees the sky as dark.
“If it comes rain, hard like before,
you’ll be in trouble; roots won’t hold.”
He looks at me a fearful face,
so I look up at nests in limbs,
with squirrels and two young robins
intent on making more.
“About the rain,” I say, “the roots.
Tree’s been here longer than we have.”
He swings his head from side to side,
and clear as any bell
rings out a warning one more time.
“Storms will come up sudden.
The tree will fall; you mark my words.”
But I continue to protest,
“Right now, there’s seasons we can wait.
Up there, my friend, and what of them?”
I pierce the arc he’s drawn.
“The birds need just a while,
as do the squirrels this time of year.”
He laughs out loud, “It leans too much,”
and then farewells me in the light
of clouded sun beneath
a full-green tree alive with life.
I know he’s right, of course.
It leans too much, no doubt.
Some time. Some storm. The tree will fall.
In 1991, Jesse Doiron was teaching in Kiev, Ukraine when the U.S.S.R. collapsed into oblivion. In 2021, Jesse Doiron was teaching in Beaumont, Texas when the United States did not.
United We Stand
Antoinette Winstead
February 11, 2021
They charged the hilltop citadel
breached its hallowed oaken doors
marauded its sacred halls, declaring
victory from its Chamber’s desecrated floor.
They proclaimed terra nullius
ignoring the People’s history
planted their rebel flag
all for a despot’s glory.
Dumbfound by the chaos
the World watched in disbelief
the destruction of Democracy’s beacon
encouraged by its Commander in Chief.
But the mutineers miscalculated the People
their steadfast resilience and determination
believed them divided and conquered
instead found them united in conviction.
The insurrectionist lead by a megalomaniac
soon to meet a Judas’s fate
forever denounced as traitors
purveyors not of freedom but hate.
Though battle bruised and bloody
the People rise as one
the World need not fear
Democracy is not done.
Antoinette F. Winstead, a poet, playwright, director, professor, and actor, teaches film and theater courses at Our Lady of the Lake University where she also serves as the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Program Head for the Mass Communication and Drama programs.
Jubilation of Flies
Chris Ellery
February 11, 2021
The fly that dallied with Mike Pence’s hair
in misty and mellow October missed out
on the feast of the new year’s Epiphany.
Flies live more than a day, but not three months.
Flies carry pathogens and parasites. They vomit
and poop on food. But with their taste for corruption,
they also solve crimes and help surgeons
treat festering wounds by eating the rotting tissue.
The fly that dallied with Mike Pence’s hair
later laid hundreds of eggs. The hundreds of flies
that emerged from pupae that morphed from larvae
that hatched from those eggs each laid
hundreds of eggs. And the hundreds and hundreds
of flies—all descendants of the fly that dallied
with Mike Pence’s hair—are keen for carrion
to lay their thousands and thousands of eggs.
Whatever the state of the country and world
let humans rejoice in the gluttony of flies.
Let the lying politicians rejoice! Let the mobs
and insurrectionists, makers of corpses, rejoice!
Is America already dead, sprawled as she fell
across the wilderness of the continent?
Blessed be the fly that dallied with Mike Pence’s hair,
for she hath engendered generations of maggots
to decompose America’s naked remains
and perhaps to help discover her killer.
Is America still alive, gangrenous,
feverish, spitting blood? Can she survive?
Surely there are flies enough to breed worms enough
to bore deep in her lacerations,
to consume the infection,
to help us heal her wounded body.
Chris Ellery is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Canticles of the Body. He teaches American literature and cinema at Angelo State University.
Those That Fall Gain Fire in Their Flight
Vincent Hostak
February 10, 2021
Villanelle for Officer Brian Sicknick on the occasion
of presenting his remains at the Capitol Rotunda
In this sky, though stars are many, they are slight.
Streetlamps obstruct the wandering unnamed,
More vivid somewhere, but here with pale rays fight.
If the night were richly black, those afar would blaze.
You’d see these earthbound lanterns bend, ashamed.
In this sky, though stars are many, they are slight.
A tiny wooden box, ashes held from sight,
How can this vessel hold all that we call brave,
More vivid somewhere, but here with pale rays fight?
Retreat the flag, lower, fold thrice and tight,
Press stars to glass, six then four make ten we’ll save.
In this sky too, though stars are few, they are bright.
No one kneels, all move surely, stand upright.
They march slowly as each to one’s own grave,
More vivid somewhere, but here with pale rays fight.
Like stars, those that fall gain fire in their flight.
Some burn angry, some noble in every stave.
In this sky, though stars are many, they are slight,
More vivid somewhere, but here with pale rays fight.
Vincent Hostak is a poet, essayist, and advocate. Long a resident of Texas, he resides in the intersection of city and wilderness near Denver. His poetry is published in Sonder Midwest (#5), Tejascovido.com, the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Wild, Abandoned (the blog). His podcast on refugee resettlement & culture: https://anchor.fm/crossingsrefugees.
Three Kings Day, January 6th, 2021
Thomas Quitzau
February 8, 2021
Kings of today would have been despised,
As most are, by the three that followed
Their hearts, seeking leadership bestowed,
Knowing even babies should be prized.
Were it not for suns, bearings would flee.
Cold wars, hot conflicts would cease to scare.
A billion mangers could not declare,
Were it not for The Son, one of three.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, his true
Love died in our capitol building
When flag-draped bearded stormers pushed through
To fight, for freedom’s losers still sting.
A wring of hands, and all through the House,
Not a congresswoman was sitting
Down the balconies, raiders did douse
Police and podia spluttering;
Bullhorns, shouts, teargas, flags filled the stairs:
Whispers drowned, flashbangs’ rat-a-tat glares:
Senators, sheltered, safely huddled
Gaped while the duck’s lame-quacked bids muddled.
Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.