San Diego, 1945

Carol Coffee Reposa

June 30, 2021

Looking out the window

In the back seat

Of our battered Ford

I saw something

Filled with light,

More light than I had ever seen

Bigger than anything

I knew to name,

Even the sun

Or Mother’s arms

When she carried me to bed.

Pointing to that brightness I squealed,

Shrieked  “Light! Light! Light!”

Jumping up and down as we passed by.

I watched the blazing ball, pointed to it,

Screamed its presence into my world

Until the wonder was lost to view.

Then I saw more lights.

They grew larger, smaller, large again.

I wanted to touch them,

Pull their brightness into my hands

But they were beyond my reach.

Long years after

I would learn

That I had pointed to a neon globe

Atop a seaside hamburger palace,

The glittering blue Pacific all around.

It was dusk, and harbor lights

Were beginning to appear.

The war now over, great gray battleships

Were plowing through the swells,

Slowly coming into port

To bring the sailors home.

But knowing these peripheral details

Did not

Could not

Change the mystery or magic

Of what I’d seen.  That light

Would continue to shine through my days

And dreams, clearing away the darknesses

That later would come,

The biggest, brightest thing

I’d ever seen, 

Or ever would.

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.

Eid Every Week

Sumera Saleem

June 29, 2021

A day bath before twelve o’clock every Friday.

Before the prayer call rings our house,

“Our” is my mother’s favorite word 

And “house” is my father’s. I can see

Both words smoothing the cracks

Left inside us by sour tongue and walloping time. 

They can see sunny smiles on our faces, 

Which glee-glowingly trace how Eid comes to us each Friday.

We softly hold in our palms like butterflies crisp five rupee notes.

Wrapped in flamboyant frocks, we savor every moment honey-sweet.

We wheel our feet on gyre, we sing our hearts on the lyre.

“Be generous,” they say, “It’s a way to bless 

The one who is burdened with the less and

Both words ward off the devils, dilly-dallying our joys.”

We pillow fight for our favorite words 

Until “Be” becomes mine and “generous” my sister’s.

A night fight before twelve o’clock every Friday.

Sumera Saleem is a lecturer in the department of English language and literature, Sargodha University, Sargodha and gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab for the session 2013-15. Her poems have appeared in Tejascovido, Langdon Review published by Tarleton State University, USA, Blue Minaret, Lit Sphere, Surrey Library UK, The Text Journal, The Ghazal Page, Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters, Word Magazine. A few more are forthcoming in international and national anthologies.

The Pony Ride

Betsy Joseph

June 27, 2021

When I was five

my mother drove me one morning

 to a small field near the neighborhood stores.

A weathered man, camping there with a pony for the day,

was offering rides for apparently a modest sum

or my mother, ever thrifty,

would not have made time in her day to take me.

Thrilled beyond measure, my heart thundering with wonder

as the man lifted me onto the Shetland pony’s back,

I had visions of riding this brown pony to my brothers’ school

so they and their friends could see me, sitting straight and proud.

Instead, with a rope around the pony’s neck

the man walked us around in a circle.

The pony kept his head down and limped slightly.

The man tugged on the rope with one calloused hand,

a lit cigarette dangling from the fingers of his other.

As we began circling the third time,

the monotonous scenery never changing,

disappointment filled me.

Even at five 

I understood that nothing truly can be gained 

or truly learned by traveling in circles.

One may as well stand in one spot.

I find that still to be true.

Betsy Joseph (Dallas, TX) has poems that have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, Only So Many Autumns, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2019. Recently she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, published their book Benches, which pairs her haiku with his black and white photography.

Retiring Hopes

Alan Berecka

June 23, 2021

He died just after I turned four,

but I believe I have one memory 

of Jonas Berecka, my grandfather.

A short man, he’s holding a large

bright red tray full of shot glasses. 

He is coercing, cajoling my mother 

to down what he considers

an obligatory dose of his homemade 

vititus—a potent liquor laced 

with honey and caraway seeds.

The tray shakes as he pleads.

An Easter morning sun

hits the hooch as it flutters 

and shimmers. The memory ends.

Everything else I know of the man

has come secondhand, stories

of a tailor in the old country,

a mill worker in Utica.

They say the day he retired 

a switch flipped in his disposition,

from sullen to jovial overnight—

Sisyphus freed from the stone.

This story I imagine to be true—

I need to be true, a shimmering

hope that flutters just beyond reach.

Alan Berecka earns a living as a reference librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. His poetry has appeared in many journals including The Concho River Review, The Windward Review, Ruminate, and The Christian Century. In 2017 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi.

Shell Hunting

Kathryn Jones

June 20, 2021

Padre Island in summer, 

white foam ruffles on green waves, 

pink ruffles on my swimsuit and bonnet,

smells of seaweed and suntan lotion.

My mother held my tiny hand. Jump!

she said as we waded into the surf. 

She lifted me above the waves.

She gave me a plastic bucket and shovel

for scooping shells we found. Later

she taught me the names: Angel Wing,

Shark’s Eye, Calico Scallop, Sundial,

and my favorite, Lightning Whelk, 

state shell of Texas, open on the left side.

She said, you can hear the sea. 

Years later, the memory pulls at me 

like the moon pulls tides. She is not there

to lift me over the waves now. I remember 

the names of all the shells that fill 

a clear glass vase on my desk. The whelk

rests on top like a crown, and I hear

my mother’s voice floating on the sea.

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.

Camp Howze, Texas 1944

Jan Seale

June 16, 2021

Dad said sit still and do not stare.

The flag drooped for planes gone down.

They sang, “Over there. Over there.”

Five years old, in a father’s care,

I promised not to make a sound.

Dad said sit still and do not stare.

He’d volunteered to come declare

the Gospel to these war zone bound.

They sang, “Over there. Over there.”

The pews were hard. The windows’ glare

showed green soldiers all around. 

Dad said sit still and do not stare.

I swung my legs and twirled my hair,

thought of ice cream back in town.

They sang, “Over there. Over there.”

These boy-men were singing prayer

with a week to go and then outbound.

Dad said sit still and do not stare.

They sang, “Over there. Over there.”

Jan Seale, the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate, lives in Texas on the U.S.-Mexican border. She has held a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and has served as a Humanities Scholar for Humanities Texas. Her latest book of poetry is PARTICULARS: poems of smallness, published by Lamar University Literary Press.

Bitter Sweet Memory

Juan Manuel Pérez

June 13, 2021

Somewhere between 1969 and 1970

first sensed memory

my dear father, now deceased 

mother, also dead

a large man today

so was my brown-skinned father

once fit in his arms

a baby bottle

a flash of something poured in

a high-pitched question 

a soft, bitter taste

salty but tolerable 

so pacifying 

my father’s wide smile

helping me to fall asleep

distant murmuring 

it did take some years

understanding what happened

from a forced recant

father shared his beer

leaving both of us at peace

mom was not happy

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).

1968

Antoinette F. Winstead

June 9, 2021

When I was a little girl, 

not but three or four,

Daddy went off to war.

And while he was fighting the Viet-Cong,

Mommy and I moved into the attic

of the house where he was born.

The steps to this attic

narrow and steep 

proved too treacherous

for my young, uncoordinated feet

and one day I tumbled head over heels

landing at the bottom in a crumpled heap.

Forbidden to ever climb the stairs alone,

my uncle became my personal chaperone.

One cannot imagine all

a child with a human chariot can forget, 

a crayon, a doll, a coloring book,

un-fetchable without direct supervision,

so aloft his back my uncle carried me

up and down, again and again, no objections.

Then one morning, 

late in the autumn, 

a uniformed stranger 

swept me up in his arms, 

declared me his daughter,

relieving my uncle of his carrier honors.

And though many things I no longer recollect, 

I’ll never ever forget the year of my personal, uncle chariot.

Antoinette F. Winstead, a poet, playwright, director, and actor, teaches film and theater courses at Our Lady of the Lake University where she serves as the Program Head for the Mass Communication and Drama programs. Her poetry has been published in TejasCovido, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Voice de la Luna, Jerry Jazz Musician, and The Woman Inc.

Absolution

 Loretta Diane Walker

 June 6, 2021

Memories, landmarks in the gray town of my mind  

where urgent cries echo through sunless rooms:  

my ten-year-old self obsessing over five cavities  

and the silver mines they create in my mouth;  

the milky haze from the roach bombs Mom ignites  

before we move into a tiny apartment  

with a sad sagging roof,  

the unforgiving confessions of its creaky floors;  

elders who sing Amen to wind, wounds, wounded-dreams  

‘cause history’s ceremony grooms them to remain humble,  

ask for nothing more than the poverty  

spilling from the pockets of their second-hand cotton dresses.  

Maybe I should confess

at age eleven, I threw rocks at two dogs sinning.  

I was a bedwetter until age twelve.  

In middle school, bonding with cool girls was fruitless.  

I failed an English test so they would like me.  

I tried a cigarette, choked, they still didn’t like me.  

I wanted to taste stars in the Milky Way,  

Curious of their sweetness.  

Nineteen, I pressed a blade against my wrist,  

didn’t know the difference between a crocus and hyacinth.  

The first time I had cancer, I prayed to die  

after the fourth injection of the “red devil.”  

But the children kept singing in my head

until my body was song.

I slept. Wept. Lived  

to plant a garden with sunflowers and begonias.  

Time is a manipulator.  

Why do I make these confessions to the sky now  

on this sultry September day?  

West Texas heat is unforgiving.  

With no insult to butterflies, I stand beneath  

a chestnut tree, snub their existence, long for  

the hummingbird I saw yesterday,  

and all the yesterdays  

when my body was a stainless cathedral of health.  

Loretta Diane Walker, an award-winning poet, multiple Pushcart Nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry, for her collection, In This House (Bluelight Press). Loretta is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, India, Ireland, and the UK. She has published five collections of poetry. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She teaches elementary music at Reagan Magnet School, Odessa, Texas.

Tents

Thomas Quitzau

May 30, 2021

The Good Friday earthquake of 1964,

registering 9.0 on the Richter Scale,

destroyed Anchorage, Alaska.

Rocky Mountain high altitude sickness

Fogs my memory, difficult to breathe

Cross country trek seeking greater freedom

Driven by the Great Earthquake1 my parents

Sped to Denver, dropped me off there alone

Time to turn less blue in oxygen tents

People look blurry through crinkly tents

White walls back blue feelings with this sickness

Dad waiting out of view helpless alone

So important to remember to breathe

Hospital rules forbade any parents

Nineteen sixty-four fighting for freedom

Moving toward the Gulf’s oil and freedom

Good Friday shook Anchorage most intense

Events change families’ plans and parents

Stay up late, deal with diapers and sickness

Great lands mired in civil rights strain to breathe

Marches let all know no one is alone

Immigrants walk great distances alone

Seeking the same care, good jobs, and freedom

Crammed in trucks, trafficked, difficult to breathe

Separated, exploited live contents

Increased risk of rape, death, loss, and sickness

Only to wait in cages for parents

Wrapped in foil, inside tents, without parents

Children left for reasons unknown alone

Great long borders, broken system’s sickness

Cities’ allure mesmerizing freedom

Beckoning migrant workers sans pretense

Many toilers, economies’ lives breathe

Dad appears next morning (now I can breathe)

Bearing a gift (you’ve got to love parents)

Nothing allowed except O2 in tents

Yellow Tonka truck appears, Dad alone,

Mom with the others not feeling freedom

Others thinking something to this sickness

Camping in tents in parks where we can breathe

Free from sickness, side-by-side with parents

Don’t leave us alone, God, give us Freedom!

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.

Mystery

Nate Wilbert

May 1, 2021

Last memories of my grandma

include papers jammed in brown manila

folders going back generations.

The family tree if you cared to see.

She pulled, planted, and cultivated 

our ancestry by the bed.

I think about it now. 

I think about how we’re each heading

to mystery pulled or pushed 

or broke

or mending and man do I want to see.

But what I see is being

carried up the gold stairwell after hours 

down bright halls to your room

dad sharing with me

this is your brother

while mom lay asleep.

Delight and nascent pride join me

for the dark ride home.

Then, as now, as in the mystery 

you are my brother, my earliest memory.

Nate Wilbert is a husband, data nerd, living in the Adirondacks, and writing poetry at Empty The Empyrean.