Dialogue Poetry
For Mariupol
Roberta Shellum Dohse
April 24, 2022
Run, run, run like the wind,
Run from the harrowing scythe,
From the blade so sharp that cuts like a knife.
The enemy is here, right at our gates,
Come to bury you in the dust of its hate.
Save yourselves – do not wait I pray!
Save yourselves to fight another day.
You are a coward, you do not understand.
We will not leave our beloved land.
We will stay and fight for what we believe
For a chance to be free where we were born.
You, you run. I turn my back on you.
But I have children, bairns I must save.
I must get them free from this dark burning place
They are too small and I must teach,
Teach them why you fight and stay,
staring down evil straight in its face.
Your resolve, so fierce, but watch out for the knife.
Can you find no other way out of this strife?
That is not what they did at the Alamo.
In the face of such odds, they knew their fate
But still chose to hold the enemy at bay,
Saving others by their delay.
We will do the same, we will hold the line
So that others may live in this fierce time.
You run, take the little ones now,
Soon it will be far too late.
My heart is breaking, I want to stay,
But I will return to fight another day.
With the young ones, I will flee,
But I will tell them of you and your bravery,
Your love of land and its people, too.
I will tell them. Know, we will never forget you.
Roberta Shellum Dohse hails primarily from California. After living on a farm in northern Minnesota and in Oregon, she moved to Texas in 1980, attended law school, and has practiced law in Corpus Christi since 1997. Formerly a flight instructor and a college professor, she has always loved to write.
Late November
Jesse Doiron
April 24, 2022
“What month we in?” he asked,
as if to say he’d been asleep
so long as to forget.
“It’s late November, Daddy,
well into cold, you know.
There’s frost on every pane.”
“Well, I can see I cannot see,”
he answered me and smiled.
“It’s ice. It’s ice on all the glass.”
“I’ll do the windows if you like,”
and rose to go outside,
prepared to clear the view.
“No, no. That’s how it is.
These days. Not here. Not there.
Somewhere – between.”
“The sky is very blue,” I said,
and the neighbors still have snow
– north side of their trees.”
“From yesterday?” he asked,
“The snow, I mean. The snow?
Is it old snow on the trees?”
“Well, a week or so,
and hardly any dropped away.
Still there – north-side shade.”
“That long. That long –
What month we in?” he asked again.
And once again we then began.
“It’s late November – Daddy.”
Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.
Imagine That Moment When Chemistry Thrust Its Interlocked Molecules Between Us
Robert Allen
April 24, 2022
You stand in your father’s house, counting grapes
near a table laid out Super Bowl style
with chips, dips, sausage balls, and plates of fruit.
You complain, “These green and red sugar bombs
go straight to my hips.”
I think they look fine
but do not say. “That’s good sugar,” I say
and begin to list the grapes, berries, melons,
bananas, and pineapple chunks I eat
every day.
“Still too sweet for me,” you swoon.
I quote an article I read in Time
which argued it’s almost impossible
to eat too much fruit. “The fiber in fruit
forms a latticework on the small intestine
which keeps the sugar from being absorbed
right away, and it helps food molecules
reach the intestine’s end sooner, so you
feel full more quickly after eating fruit.
Hence, fruit consumption is
self-limiting.”
When your baby blues glaze over, I stop.
I think about the year my father died,
how my hands and even feet grew arthritic
that winter, and desperate for a cure
I sought out books on diet therapy
and discovered that eating pineapple
could alleviate my symptoms, as if
my father’s ghost were watching over me,
steering me to an answer.
“Outliers,”
I cry, shaking us from our reverie.
“That article did call grapes ‘outliers’
because they are basically little bags
of sugar.”
“Yes,” you sigh, “it’s a damn shame.
All this analyzing and scrutinizing
of each and every tiny thing we do
doesn’t help with living la dolce vita.
I wish we could go back to being infants.
Then, if you wanted to learn about something
you eagerly put it between your lips.”
Robert Allen is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and four cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Writers Take a Walk, and Poetry on the Move. He co-facilitates Gemini Ink's Open Writer's Lab.
The First Day
Suzanne Morris
April 23, 2022
Two weeks after the war begins,
news anchors on location are
showing signs of fatigue from
long days and late nights
eyes puffy; hair slicked down
so quickly are developments
racing ahead
there’s no time for the usual
on-air speculation as
Volodymyr Zelensky and the
Ukrainians grow larger than life
and already the first day
seems in the distant past
but I cannot forget
the attractive woman with
two wide-eyed children
clinging to her side
in heavy coats and
furry hoods
sheltering in an
underground station in Kyiv
among a noisy, jostling crowd.
Having found the woman
speaks broken English
the reporter leads in for the
television audience,
They were roused from their sleep
at 5 a.m. by the sound of bombardment
and they fled....
The mother is toting a cellophane
bag of treats
for her children have had
nothing to eat.
Leaning close with her mic,
the reporter asks with feeling
Did you have any idea of the danger
when you went to bed?
The woman’s face clouds and
she shakes her head
No! I was completely surprised.
I never thought
the Russians would invade.
Two months after
the war begins,
millions are displaced, tens of
thousands wounded or dead
news teams rotate
back home to the States
fresh faces appear
before the camera
and I wonder
how far from home the
woman and her children are
and if they are safe
somewhere
wondering if home is
still there.
A novelist with eight published works spanning forty years, Suzanne Morris now focuses largely on writing poems. Her poetry is included in the anthology, No Season for Silence - Texas Poets and Pandemic (Kallisto GAIA Press, 2020). Examples have also appeared in The Texas Poetry Assignment and The New Verse News.
An Emissary Visits V. Putin
Chip Dameron
April 23, 2022
V. Putin is startled to see
a figure appear in his midst.
Emissary: I have come to settle accounts.
V. Putin: Who are you? How did you manage
to breach my security scheme?
Emissary: I have my ways. Now let us speak
of what I have come for. The deeds
of death mount up daily. Do you
think you can destroy another
country and not suffer for it?
V. Putin: I’ve been saving the Ukrainians
from their Nazi persecutors,
and everyone should celebrate.
Who are you to say that the world
should view this gift differently?
Emissary: Indeed, you have done what you said
you would do. And for that, you’ve earned
a place in the ninth circle, where
traitors to their oaths find themselves
alone and lacking their lackeys.
The others there are tangled in
their own duplicities. Beware.
V. Putin: What have I purportedly done
to deserve these accusations?
Emissary: Ah, the cadavers speak volumes.
You have Novichoked every
adversary you’ve dared to fear.
And while Navalny lives to rot
for years in prison, you will rot
for eternity in Hades.
V. Putin: These men deserved just what they got.
They were all traitors to the state.
Emissary: I have more to say. Remember
the botched rescue raid in Beslan,
when your troops used grenade launchers
and flame throwers, turning the school
into an inferno, killing
hundreds of children and adults?
V. Putin: Those troops did what they had to do.
Emissary: So you say. But that blood blackens
your name. And now you have become
the Butcher of Bucha, the fiend
who brought a grisly death
to civilians crowded into
a Mariupol theater.
Your days are numbered. Your rightful
place awaits. Your fate will come soon.
V. Putin: Be gone! I’ll hear no more of this!
I’ll have you torn from limb to limb!
Emissary: To tear a limb you must seize one.
I am a shade with limbs of smoke.
When I return, I’ll take you down
to where you’re meant to be. Your end
will be a broiling beginning.
The emissary disappears.
V. Putin stares into the void.
Chip Dameron is the author of ten collections of poetry and a travel journal. He is a professor emeritus of English at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he’s also been a Dobie Paisano fellow.
A.M. Radio Call-In
Darby Riley
April 22, 2022
“Darby from San Antonio.
What’s up, my friend?”
“Global temperatures, Trey.
Sea levels. Human population.
Extinctions. Ignorance,
Greed. Chemical pollution.
They’re all up.”
“Whoa, Darby!
You sound like a liberal!
Aren’t you calling
the wrong place?”
“Trey, I want my granddaughter
to have a full life
on a healthy planet.
Science says she won’t
if we don’t together
change the way we live.”
“Science says many things,
Darby. Who to believe?
We have to take care of ourselves.
Let future generations do the same.”
“Trey, I just hope enough of
your listeners think otherwise.”
Darby Riley, a native San Antonian, has been married to Chris Riley since 1971 and they have three grown children and a granddaughter, age 6. He has hosted a monthly poetry writing workshop for over 25 years. He practices law with his son Charles and is active in the local Sierra Club.
Mesquite Bean Coffee vs. Arabian Coffee
Jan Seale
April 22, 2022
Why would you do this, take a holy
popular elixir and borrow its name?
Who said coffee must be made
with a strict heritage from Africa?
Why not call mesquite bean coffee
Mesquite-aide or Bean Consommé?
Why call your coffee Transfusion,
Jitter Juice? Java? Joe?
But couldn’t this go trending, spreading
to pinto or lima or green pea coffee…
Is there a license, a copyright
for black, comforting, exotic?
…maybe sneaking on to carrot coffee,
radish coffee, tomato coffee?
Oh come now, aren’t we getting
a bit defensive and upset?
But what does it look like, this sipped
stuff before it is brewed?
If you must know, like fine sand,
with a few twigs, mere shreds.
Has anyone asked permission to grind beans
and pods, offer the resulting concoction?
Could you stop making distinctions,
just be open-minded and tolerant?
Liquid trash trees! Cow feed! That’s what it is!
Vaqueros out on the range with nada else.
Look: It isn’t against the law,
heretical, unhealthy, or misnamed.
No stimulant? Depression could set in,
upending the universe, stopping civilization.
Here. Calm yourself. Take a sip.
Consider it a peace offering.
Jan Seale lives in South Texas, a place of anomalies. As you might guess, she drinks mesquite bean coffee. She is the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate. Her latest book is Particulars: poems of smallness.
Give Us This Day Our Automotive Angels
Thomas Quitzau
April 21, 2022
We had just enough for a gallon of milk.
Exhausted, I emerged from the Kroger,
Feeling down, turned the ignition to hear
The sound of one hand clapping—
Not even quick clicks.
Stepping out of the minivan, I prayed out loud,
Lord, please send me an angel.
Of course I didn’t expect a burning bush
Or voices in clouds, but I did expect an answer,
Not lip service.
The fact that You answered me within 60 seconds
Shocks me to this day. A migrant appeared instantly,
Crossing the mostly empty lot, waving as he
Approached in his truck, and spoke in what
(Hallowed be Thy Name)
Sounded like six voices at once (I could swear I heard
A Greek accent), It’s the battery, the robotic vocals
Pronounced confidently: Just clean the terminals, and
It should be good, he gestured, twisting one hand as he
Gave me the advice.
Keep in mind, he had barely even looked at the car.
He cleaned the terminals, I got in, started the van
Dumbfounded, and before I could thank him,
He drove slowly away just as strangely as
He newly arrived.
Now I listen to others more intently,
Wondering whether God is speaking through them,
Listening for wisdom, for assistance, for
Ideas, for requests, for prayers, for Your voices:
Thy will being done.
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.
Fine, Big Hands (Stupid, Deaf Hands)
Kevin Garrison
April 20, 2022
My father measured me
By the size of my hands.
Each Saturday morning,
I would crawl onto his bed
Where he would palm my
Hand like a basketball
And say “Fine, big hands”
To which I would counter
“Fine, little hands, you mean.”
Until one day in high school, he
Spoke “Fine, big hands” without
Irony and I replied with…
…knowing silence.
These “stupid, deaf hands”
He should have told me.
I sign “Nice to date you”
To the new lady at the ASL class
Making the Deaf teachers giggle.
I sign “good” to the Deaf
Author who asks for tutoring
When I mean “thank you”
And he nods and smirks in reply.
I sign “stupid” to my sisters
When I fail another sign,
“Stupid” should be my sign name,
The “K” bloodying my forehead.
Even now, I look down at
These fearful, deaf hands
That curl my fingers inwards…
…piercing palms.
I wonder if Joseph told his son
That he had “Fine big hands”
As his boy built the world
Furniture piece after furniture piece.
I think Jesus must have known
What I feel: He remained silent
His hands rendered disabled
Before asking why his God had…
…forsaken him.
Kevin Garrison is a deaf professor of English at Angelo State University. He resides in the central spaces between Deaf World and Hearing World, and his poetry grapples with the daily challenges of being oral deaf, often with hints of religious symbolism.
Up on the Salt Fork
Milton Jordan
April 19, 2022
Yesterday blew by chalky white dusting
every camper’s expectation
of breakfast eggs without too much grit.
Cracking asphalt curved along the Salt Fork,
running deep in its red dirt gravel bed.
Locust trees clung to the hillside below
the ridge protecting the abandoned house.
I wonder, she said, who lived there,
though she was not asking me,
and left their Massey Ferguson tractor
beside that Ford pickup to rust away.
Did they plan a town and build the road
expecting others like themselves?
But she was still not asking me.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He is editing a volume of selections from the first year of Texas Poetry Assignment. His collection, A Forest for the Trees, is forthcoming from Backroom Window Press.
After Life, Over Lunch
Darby Riley
April 18, 2022
My friend asks: What do you think
happens after you die? Will you meet
your dear friends and relatives?
I say, we know you become
rich compost. (Avoid formal –
dehyde and metal caskets).
And your genes survive in your
descendants, and your spirit
lives on in those who loved you:
your wisdom, your attitudes
your jokes, your approach to life
the way you eat, work, talk, think.
That doesn’t help me any,
says my friend. Facing the end,
I want bliss to be beyond.
You’re too bound to your person,
I say. Maybe heaven is
you merging with a cosmic
consciousness. We know we’re
the universe reflecting
on itself. There’s a divine
aspect to this long journey.
It’s mystery, miracles,
infused with sacred meaning,
as each being emerges
in all its precise beauty
from what seems to be nothing.
My friend, age 78,
sighs and shakes his head. I can’t
buy the mystical, he says.
Darby Riley, a native San Antonian, has been married to Chris Riley since 1971 and they have three grown children and a granddaughter, age 6. He has hosted a monthly poetry writing workshop for over 25 years. He practices law with his son Charles and is active in the local Sierra Club.
Mary Resurrected
John Rutherford
April 17, 2022
What joy you must have felt
three days after the crucifixion,
when you heard your son
had left the tomb.
You, who bore witness
to his murder, who saw the guards
gambling for his sandals,
who bore him, fed him,
raised him up and saw him fall
and bathed his body
through your tears,
who laid him in his sepulchre.
And three days after
the stone moved,
Angels told us,
three Marys in all,
where he had gone,
yes, such joy!
Is it no wonder that I
went to Heaven whole
to seek my son again,
to cradle him again,
to brush his hair,
this child, this man,
to behold my son in his kingdom
at last?
John Rutherford is a poet writing in Beaumont, Texas. Since 2018 he has been an employee in the Department of English at Lamar University. Since 2014, he has followed the events in Ukraine.
Falls
Chris Ellery
April 17, 2022
Hiking below the falls in spring,
I come across the rotten body
of a buck with horns
just beginning to show.
Up where the stream
breaks over stone in a drop
to jagged rocks, it slipped
one icy day and fell.
“Poor young buck,” I say. “Alas,
how your stench spoils my walk
and fouls the sweet water
here above Iron Springs!”
The buck replies: “Did you say
sweet? Did you say fouls? Did you say
stench? So like a man to confuse
the wilderness with judgment.”
A long-time resident of San Angelo, Chris Ellery is the 2019 recipient of the Texas Poetry Award from the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com.
Untitled
Michael Helsem
April 16, 2022
To the two ducks
Returning to our pool I say
Long time no see
I wonder where you wintered else
Instead of Dallas Texas
These past couple years
They look back at me
Not particularly alarmed
We were in the Land Without Tears
And Where Bugs Abound
But there is war there too
Now, & we could not stay
Some madness in the Nine Worlds
You may have heard of, being a Poet
I said I was hoping
It hadn’t come to that
But since you have fled here
You are welcome to our pool
We never swim in
And any bugs you can find
Spared by the chemicals
People sow their lawns with
I am glad for a duck
People get on my nerves these days
They completely lack your dignity
And sense of tact
The duck continued staring
Fixedly at the blue painted pool
Michael Helsem was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterward, fish fell from the sky.
Dreaming in Noir 200
Fernando Esteban Flores
April 15, 2022
(Para los poetas Latino Americanos)
Roberto Bolaño poeta Chileno
Dreamt that I was awake
I offered him a shot of tequila
A glass of Pinot Noir
The poet’s blood
I said
He took the tequila
Uno no debe presumir
He replied Prefiero conservar
Mi sangre para la página
I prefer to conserve
My blood for the page
What do you do
Between the emptiness
& the loneliness
I asked
Lo que siempre hago
Dijo
What I always do
He said
Soñar
Con los ojos abiertos
Dream
With my eyes open
Fernando Esteban Flores is a native son of Tejas, a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, published three books of poetry: Ragged Borders, Red Accordion Blues, & BloodSongs available through Hijo del Sol Publishing, published in multiple journals, reviews, newspapers, and online sites, selected in 2018-19 by the Department of Arts & Culture of the City of San Antonio, with support from Gemini Ink for his poem Song for America V (Yo Soy San Antonio) as one of 30 poems/poets to commemorate the City’s Tricentennial anniversary, and recently named poetry editor of the Catch the Next Journal of Ideas & Pedagogy.
The aide, the maid, & the old man in 217
Herman Sutter
April 12, 2022
He’s playing with hisself again.
Says to me, I like your hair.
Only I saw what he was up to.
That something he supposed to be doin?
What else he gonna?
That’s what I say.
Who else he got to play with?
You’d think he wouldn’t wanna
anymore. His age.
Age aint the problem.
It’s just who he is.
It’s just his his-ness.
Just burning itself out.
Likes my hair, he say.
I guess that aint all he was liking.
I guess that’s right.
Glad this time ‘least it was you.
Somebody gonna have to clean it up.
Somebody always do.
Herman Sutter (poet, librarian) is the author of The World Before Grace (Wings Press) and Stations (Wiseblood Books). His work appears in: Saint Anthony Messenger, The Perch, tejascovido, Langdon Review, Touchstone, i.e., as well as: Texas Poetry Calendar (2021) & By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville Press, 2019).
At the Bible Study
Milton Jordan
April 11, 2022
Temple, I said.
Shirley? She asked.
No. Jerusalem.
Oh, Jerusalem,
dead prophets, stoning and all that.
No Solomon’s 300 year Temple.
With Sheba’s Queen, she said,
and those indentured Ethiopian laborers.
You’re so negative.
Realistic, I’d say.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He is editing a volume of selections from the first year of Texas Poetry Assignment. His collection, A Forest for the Trees, is forthcoming from Backroom Window Press.
the baptism of Jesus: a poem in two voices
Sister Lou Ella Hickman
April 10, 2022
Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian who now ministers as a spiritual director; her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and four anthologies. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. Press 53 published her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless in 2015.