The Day I Drove a Pick-Up Truck in Houston

Katherine Hoerth

August 29, 2021

It’s not like me, but Alamo was out

of compact cars, sedans, and even coupes. 

We’ll give you this one for the same price, miss,

the agent says and offers me the keys.

The pickup truck awaits me like a steed 

in the lot. I climb into the cab.

I raise the seat to see above the dash. 

I scoot and stretch my legs to reach the pedals.

But oh, how easily the key slips in

the ignition. How the rumble feels

beneath my thighs. How small the whole world looks

from this high up. I hit the road and smirk.

A girl like me could lose herself in this: 

the roaring and the scent of gasoline,

the childhood memories it conjures up.

Suddenly, I’m in my father’s truck:

sitting shotgun as he gazes off

into the distance as a white cross dangles 

from the rearview mirror, guiding him

and countless other men with furrowed brows,

rough hands, and somber scowls on their faces

as they navigate the roads of life

from high above the road, the world beneath

their tires. How irresistible, this feeling,

becoming one with metal, muscle, fuel. 

The tank is full with privilege. I haul ass. 

On the highway, now, I take up space—

I merge and smaller cars swerve out my way

like I’m a beast. The whole world smells of me

and my exhaust. I punch it, blowing smoke

into the open sky that I believe 

the Lord created just for men like me.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry collections, including Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots, which won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015. 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 in 2021.

The Shot(s)

Thomas Quitzau

August 5, 2021

Didya get the shot? Did you get the shot?

Didya get the shot? You should get the shot!

You should get the shot! You should get the shot!

Why’d I get it? I really dunno!

Why’d I get it? They said that I should!

They said it was free! It was free! Free! Free!

I feel so free! I got the shot! Did you?

Did you get the shot? Didya get the shot?

I just got the shot! Which one did you get?

Which shots did you get? Did you get one? Two?

I got two; did you? My shot’s the good one!

The other? Not so good! Did you get one?

Which one? Up to you! You oughta get two!

They stopped the one-shot! Did you get that one?

I got the other! Did you get the shot?

Which one’dyou get? None? There’s only one!

Now there’s another shot! Did you get it?

I didn’t get it! I got the other!

They said I needed it! Now they say we

Need an other! A nother! Another!

Here’s to the one-shot, two-shots, three-shots more!

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.

The Stillness

Robert Allen

July 29, 2021

Tuesdays in my neighborhood I drive down

the quiet street, looking at blue recycle

bin after bin, stuffed to the brim with what

I cannot comprehend the endless source of.

Cardboard boxes peeking over the top,

once-used packing foam, empty supply bags,

damaged pieces of lumber, lengths of pipe,

remnants of failed decorating ideas—

I have even seen legs of plastic chairs

propping up the hinged lids at hungry angles.

Where do people get all this junk? I ask

because I am clueless. Do they buy pizza,

beer, and pop from some deeply rooted fear

that these overblown garbage crates will die

without constant nourishment? It would take

me weeks to fill mine, and the noise it makes,

rolling out to the curb and back, its wheels

scoring the concrete as they inch along,

not to mention the grinding diesel engine

of the monster truck when it comes to lift

these supposedly reusable wares

onto its long, yawning back. My jaw drops

to contemplate the stillness of my life.

I do not consume enough of the world’s

bright inventions to ever keep my bin

at profitable levels. I come home

trying to conceive how I would begin

to throw a few of my accumulated

treasures away, but why swallow this task?

Can it be wrong to hold on to the past,

to believe there is a story to tell

in every phone, stopped clock, or carelessly

broken doll that falls in my water well?

I must be the last old coot on the block

who stays put despite rippling fads, would rather

hibernate than share any human trait

with the fever of mindless bliss in it,

deplores the excess of waste on display

from sleepy cul-de-sac to busy cross street,

and envies the calm methodical ease

with which the neighbors ply their purging trade.

Robert Allen is retired and lives with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and six cats. He has poems in di-vêrsé-city, Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, the San Antonio Express-News, The Ocotillo Review, and Poetry on the Move. He now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.

El Espejismo del Conquistador Perdido

Jesse Doiron

July 22, 2021

The Mirage of the Lost Conquistador

Coronado, great armored conqueror,                                       

God damn your bronze-and-leather-covered hide.                  

You stole me from my home, in Badajoz,                               

and lost me here in Tejas – now forgot.                                  

Where are the seven cities and the gold?                                

The wealth beyond all earthly wealth – in hell?                      

The demon takes the damned. The fool gives up 

his soul. There is no gold, no gold at all.                                 

Such laden aspirations laid to waste      

in Tejas. Coronado, where are you?                                        

I do not know the day today.  Last night,                                

Hernando died. My breastplate’s gone, my lance,                  

my helmet, steed, and men, food, water, way                         

and hope. The sun has taken all. All. All.                                

I can not one league more walk on. Not one.                          

I cannot sweat. I cannot cry. My God,                                    

it seems as if I only live to die!                                                

Where are you now? Where now my God am I?                    

The gila monster’s tongue drips slowly wet.                           

The quick, coyote-calling wind howls dry.                             

Poor Pascualillo, just a boy. He died.                                     

Coronado! Coronado! Damn you,                                           

Coronado. God damn you and your lies.                                 

Because of you, I am alone, am damned.                                

To die alone. I—all alone. And damned.                                

I see a gilded place afar and bright,                                         

rise upon a thinning white-hot layer,                                       

widen white, high above the golding sand.                                         

Pascual! I see him! Standing there, smiling.                            

A boy at the city-gate, just a boy,                                            

unsheathes a shining, steely-shining blade –                           

the bright, hot blade of Mammon’s heavy sword.                   

He strikes it hard against the air on which                              

the city skies yet higher. Then gold-hot                                  

wind sweeps all intended wealth and rich, rich           

jewels, all vaulted graven images and                         

coins of every kind, from every window,                                

every door, every lock-hole opening –                                    

everywhere, into the white, hot air. Where?                            

Damn you, Coronado – conquistador.   

Jesse Doiron is a native Texan. He was born in the Lowlands of the Upper Gulf Coast and almost died in the Badlands of the Panhandle. After traveling the world for more than a dozen years, he came home.

TYA No. 46

Juan Manuel Pérez

July 15, 2021

from the manuscript, THIRTY YEARS AGO: LIFE AND THE GULF WAR

Thirty years ago, flying to the front

early in the war, before the big push

the transport helicopter lifted up

into the bluest skies I’d seen that month

two of our squads onboard “Marine Airlines”

gunner by the door manning the big one

looking at the ground; beautiful, quiet

despite the immediate chopper noise

caught in the moment of HIS creation 

the back opening view was picturesque  

…until the fear of a volatile sky 

infected me with an old memory 

I was a child with a new pellet gun 

shooting at birds as they flew through the air

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).

Where I Am

Chip Dameron

July 8, 2021

The milky dusk highlights the bare branches

of cedar elms, and oak trees fledge green life.

Two cardinals arrive, hop and peck seeds

beneath the emptied feeder. As shadows 

begin to deepen, darken, cricket time

ticks, ticks ticks. Are the deer lonely? Squirrels?

Have they changed their pre-pandemic routines?

Have the stars? As night comes on, cloaked and still,

stealing the last of daytime memories,

I sink into a sea of dreams, where hope

and heartache dance and quarrel, and what’s lost

may return, or disappear forever. 

When day breaks, the new quotidian calls

me forth, onward into the scouring light.

Chip Dameron is the author of ten collections of poetry, including his latest, Mornings with Dobie’s Ghost. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he’s also been a Dobie Paisano fellow, and he currently serves on the board of the Writers’ League of Texas.

Cartographers

Milton Jordan

July 1, 2021

will sketch contours of the land creating

images of what they’ve seen before them,

rolling prairie and more level timbered land

where people hunted, settled and planted

now and again for generations,

ragged hills and ridges rising above

the erratic course of rivers running

toward misshapen estuaries and bays

marking explored or unknown coastland;

or follow details from transit and line

marking boundary limits carefully

across every natural barrier,

with slight regard for contours or planters,

to support latecomers ownership claims

and fulfill men’s insatiable urge

to square every circle in creation.

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.