In Defense Of

Laurence Musgrove 7/2/23 Laurence Musgrove 7/2/23

In Defense of 21st-Century Christians

Thomas Quitzau

July 2, 2023

As Canadian wildfire smoke migrates

South over this otherwise pristine land,

Orangey the sunlight, hazy the air

Sending us inside, again, not again

Easy to imagine how bigger fires

Easily darkened this place to blackness.

Harder to see people are saved alone

Yet among many, and any attempts

To thin the crowds of city sunflowers

Will make us only grow closer, closer

More easily saved from fires, floods, famines

In Defense of Joggers at the Cemetery

Elizabeth N. Flores

June 11, 2023

Two joggers followed a path nearby as a family buried their father.

The priest gave the joggers a harsh glance.

The eldest son cursed them under his breath.

“Let the joggers bring some life to that lonely cemetery,”

the elderly widow told her children after the funeral

over their strenuous objections.

She imagined the joggers stopping to rest a little by Papa’s grave,

taking a few minutes to read his headstone,

amazed that he lived to 103, marveling at all he

must have done in his long life.

“I hope we can go visit Papa at least once a week, God willing,”

the widow added as she made the Sign of the Cross.

At 95, after three strokes in as many years, a weekly visit was unlikely.

The widow sighed as she rested her hand on the prayer card

with Papa’s photo. “I hope the joggers go often,”

she told her children, and they knew the discussion

of joggers at the cemetery had ended.

Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, taught for 46 years at Del Mar College and was the college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator. Her poems have appeared in the Texas Poetry Assignment, Corpus Christi Writers 2022, an anthology edited by William Mays, and the Mays Publishing Literary Magazine.

Laurence Musgrove 6/4/23 Laurence Musgrove 6/4/23

Longing for Yavneh

Janelle Curlin-Taylor

June 4, 2023

Being in exile

The country occupied, hostile, strange

“How can we sing Zion’s songs

In this strange land?”

The Second Temple destroyed

God’s House – gone

Power resides in the court of the enemy

Rome’s rage – Israel’s despair.

Rabbis turn to the enemy, asking for a safe place

Despite memorizing every detail of temple worship

Torah study becomes the new place to encounter Shekinah

The community survives.

Ziklag – David’s Yavneh

Gift from the enemy – Achish the Philistine king

Small, ordinary village – vessel for Jessie and his boys, David’s loyal men

David will reign as king – the community will survive.

Creating a vessel in exile – Dr. Lamar, a Black pastor in DC

Under a White Privilege administration

Walking in the park – noticing babies, flowers

Humans being human to other humans – the community survives.

We are all in exile from an ordered world

Seeking to make of the experience of uncertainty a livable space.

Yavneh – even granted by the enemy, sacred vessel in the midst of change

The community survives.

Janelle Curlin-Taylor is a native Texan, currently displaced in Nashville, TN. Grandfather and mother wrote poetry, it is in her blood. Her poetry has appeared in Blue Hole, Best Austin Poetry 2018-2019, Waco Wordfest Anthology, Texas Poetry Calendar 2020, Voices de la Luna, Tejascovido, and Texas Poetry Assignment.

Laurence Musgrove 5/14/23 Laurence Musgrove 5/14/23

Legs of Reality

Sumera Saleem

May 14, 2023

Sometimes, slow swagger synced with mood down,
Sometimes, sharp shuffling feet to hasten the swing of fate,
When we are late.

A few times, to walk the talk, time flexes its muscles
Through the body of our acts and emotions
When we are in motion.

At times, gait is grace when silence maims our expression,
Striding on solid footing, gravity allowing us to gain ground
When we are much grieved and in search of relief.

Legs align in harmony the paradox of movement and stasis
Towards the eyeful of ways spread ahead.

Sumera Saleem is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature, Sargodha University, Sargodha, and a 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.

Laurence Musgrove 5/7/23 Laurence Musgrove 5/7/23

In Defense of Zoning

Milton Jordan

May 7, 2023

County engineers constructed the low wall

along the ditch — sometimes a rock-bottomed swale —

bordering our subdivision built beyond

the then city’s limits to avoid

regulations developers called onerous,

and Council’s annexation decree

grandfathered all prior construction

leaving our first finished houses backed up

on this still open, oft flowing, ditch

bearing its noticeable aroma.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.

Laurence Musgrove 4/30/23 Laurence Musgrove 4/30/23

In Defense of Pain: A Reminder

Betsy Joseph

April 30, 2023

Three days post-op,

and not on vacation, sadly,

I am a pilgrim on a journey nonetheless.

A fellow sojourner, Pain, accompanies me—

a true thorn in my side—

and I pray he departs sooner rather than later.

His tirades have grown tiresome,

his barbs and jabs insincere.

Yet while an unwelcome presence in my life,

we will not remain companions for long

for he has other destinations to reach

and I have a pilgrimage to complete:

Healing.

Time with companion Pain has reminded me

of what I so often forget:

good health is not monotonous,

it certainly is not mundane.

It is the most quiet of blessings

and likely to go unappreciated

until it quits our side,

leaving us to feel like a tourist in our own bones.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.

Laurence Musgrove 4/23/23 Laurence Musgrove 4/23/23

Orwell at The Kremlin

Walter Bargen

April 23, 2023

In one corner of Red Square

there’s so much to say,

but it can’t be the word war,

it can’t be the word invasion,

it can only be a Special Military Operation.

Speaking machine gun fast

Can never be fast enough to escape.

So many that were alive leave their bodies

As they walk into the shell-shocked light.

There’s so much to consider

As the rubble of Mariupol deepens

Into an amnesia of dust

And bodies are lost forever sinking

Deeper into the rubble

When not buried in front and back yards,

In the medians of streets, in city parks,

Where knee-high crosses sprout,

Carved from splintered staircases

And shattered doors and windows.

They dangle shreds of cardboard

With names that won’t last.

Blown away in the next barrage

Or the ink erased by a cold rain

That quickly descends into blooded mud.

The old women complain, their shovels

Too heavy with frozen clods of unspeakable

Syllables. First, there’s too much to shout

As the smoke and dust choke

Every sense clinging to life.

Then there’s too much to scream

And it can’t be screamed loud and fast enough

As those shot in the back of their heads

Their hands tied behind their backs

Wait for us to speak for them.

The savage hours can’t be buried

Deep enough. So many last breaths

Out of reach. There is no second chance,

No second helping on Red Square,

Where posters are ripped from anguished hands,

Cyrillic shredded and bleeding

across cobblestones. Ribs, heads, backs

truncheoned, and a boot’s kick for good measure─

Oh, the pleasure of walking on ripe flesh─

Their uniforms and one-way visors obscuring

The grimace of smiles or tears,

Cavalierly cramming bodies into vans,

The blank pages and posters so clearly readable,

Held over their heads for all to not read:

These white sheets of sleep,

These blank breaths of declaration,

These origami wings of white doves,

These raids on the unspeakable,

This strange snow that drifts deep

Over what can’t be spoken.

Walter Bargen has published 26 books of poetry including My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021), and Too Late To Turn Back (Singing Bone Press, March 2023). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).

Laurence Musgrove 4/16/23 Laurence Musgrove 4/16/23

In Defense of Trespassing

Vincent Hostak

April 16, 2023

“Then ask not wherefore, here, alone…” William Wordsworth

Why not here

where they strung the braided wire, stacked the stones,

made a trough an imaginary boundary

between you and me and everything?

They colonized your body,

informed your many habit loops,

trained the land to produce on demand.

Come here by the old limekilns draped in kudzu,

the weed teased, buckling black-topped airstrip.

Make tracks with me in the fairway’s unstained snow.

I beg you, be impish once or twice,

or for an entire lifetime.

Why not ply the cords,

risk the barbs and staddle over to the lea?

I’ve rehearsed my defense a hundred times,

you may use it also:

“The sign uses the Old French word.

I don’t speak it.”

Or, like Woody said:

“The other side didn’t say nothing.”

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.

Laurence Musgrove 4/9/23 Laurence Musgrove 4/9/23

In Defense of Fresh & Clean

Jeffrey L. Taylor

April 9, 2023

I’ve drunk a lot of coffee,
from Army mess halls
to West Berlin konditorei,
American premium coffee houses,
roadside diners, and everything
in between.

The secret to good coffee
soon becomes clear.
The mess sergeant in that Army base
won Best Mess Hall in Europe,
three years running. You could tell
when he went on vacation —
a day before the coffee turned bad.
Crummy coffee led to decreased
consumption and the coffee
spiraled quickly down into stale.
When he returned the coffee urns
were again cleaned daily.

For good coffee,
keep the utensils clean
and the coffee freshly ground.

Jeffrey L. Taylor's first submitted poems won 1st place and runner-up in Riff Magazine's 1994 Jazz and Blues Poetry Contest. Encouraged, he continues to write and has been published in di-vêrsé-city, The Perch, Gathering Storm Magazine, Red River Review, Illya's Honey, Enchantment of the Ordinary anthology, Texas Poetry Calendar, and Langdon Review. Serving as sensei (instructor) to small children and professor to graduate students has taught him humility.

Laurence Musgrove 4/2/23 Laurence Musgrove 4/2/23

The Lady of Estonia

Suzanne Morris

April 2, 2023

She takes up most of the bench

on a crowded beach

her back turned on the camera,

her back turned on me.

Wearing a leopard skin

swimsuit–

her broad, white-as-marble,

back bare but for a string–

she might be cornered

in a wrestling ring.

Her arms crossed

on her mountainous breast

sun hat with daisy dwarfed

by her body’s great breadth

she’s looking out over the water

and doesn’t care

that I bemoan all visceral fat

stretching and bending to keep it at bay,

to look younger

on pain of irrelevance,

of invisibility.

And what I would I say to her–

if she could hear– is

Praise to you, proud lady of Estonia,

for not caring

one of your leopard spots

how the world thinks you appear.

How imposing you look

amidst string-bikini clad

young girls accruing

golden tans

and titillated glances

from male fans

as you sit with legs parted,

feet planted squarely in the sand

arms crossed in front

like a thumbed nose,

looking out over the water.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and a poet. Her work appears in online poetry journals including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pinecone Review, Emblazoned Soul Review and Stone Poetry Quarterly.

Laurence Musgrove 3/26/23 Laurence Musgrove 3/26/23

Of Old Texas Poets

Milton Jordan

March 26, 2023

Old Texas Poets

surrounded by blank verse boxcars stacked

one above another up the page,

stare at last week’s sidetracked compositions,

and wait for an eight-wheeled locomotive

burning coal and belching steam to back itself

up to those squared stanzas and move a few

into some assembly of meaning

either ironic or surprising enough

to attract post post-modern attention

hoping that one more realignment

could pull them into combinations seeming

almost to belong on the Cotton Belt’s rails.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.

Laurence Musgrove 3/19/23 Laurence Musgrove 3/19/23

In Defense of an Old East Texas Farm

Thomas Hemminger

March 19, 2023

Your fields have not been planted in so many years.

Your stock pens were long since razed.

Only a grassy mound and an old cistern

Evince the one-time house, and

A hot, tired way of life from long ago.

You accept our new cabins,

Our electricity, and our modern comforts.

They do not mar your landscape,

Nor do they pollute your ambiance with light or clamor.

Your peace remains protected like a secret.

We return to you for sake of silence, and

For rest from a busy world- our loud clime.

You offer yourself to us for a nourishment.

We are your new crop,

And you are helping us to grow.

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His personal hero is Mr. Fred Rogers, the creator of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was through America’s favorite “neighbor” that Thomas learned of the importance of loving others and of giving them their own space and grace to grow.

Laurence Musgrove 3/12/23 Laurence Musgrove 3/12/23

Why Barry Bonds Belongs in Cooperstown

Alan Berecka

March 12, 2023

Baseball writers and aficionados

have banned Bonds to infamy.

They say “he cheated; it was the juice

that slammed 73 in ought-one."

If so, I might be the Barry Bonds

of the Sinton Municipal Golf Course,

thanks to the injections of steroids

prescribed by my GP, a good golfer

in his own right. At 63, I am bombing

the ball farther than back in my prime.

The ball is flying way farther to the right,

and way farther to the left; it goes deeper

into the trees, and into deeper water.

The ball now whistles off the club face,

whistles an age-old song, “There’s no

prescription that cures a lack of talent.

There’s no substitute for well-honed skill."

Alan Berecka is the author of five books of poetry, the latest A Living is Not a Life: A Working Title (2021, Black Spruce Press) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. His poetry has appeared in such journals and websites as The Christian Century, The Concho River Review, The Texas Review, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Main Street Rag. He recently participated in the Lithuanian Writers Union’s international spring poetry festival which took place in May 2022. This was the second time Berecka has been invited to read at festivals in the birthplace of two grandparents. He earned his living for many years as a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. In January 2023, he finally lived long enough so he retired. He and his wife Alice reside in Sinton, Texas where they raised their now two adult children.

Laurence Musgrove 3/5/23 Laurence Musgrove 3/5/23

Brief: In Defense of the Life of Humble Service

Chris Ellery

March 5, 2023

If I were a candle, I would be liberal

with the burning of my wax and wick.

I would be the flame’s prodigal accomplice,

a midnight wastrel, a fetishist of melting.

Many a rushlight or votive aspire to shine

upon the pages of some undiscovered Dante,

some Beethoven or Mozart, quill in hand

composing a masterpiece throughout the night

to light just a little the dungeon of the skull.

They dream perhaps of illuminating maps

of a general or explorer, the parchment of

a king or statesman, a Washington or Lincoln,

ponderously scribbling bellicose speeches

to rally troops and citizens. At the very least

to beam from dusk to dawn on books and papers

of some prestigious priest scratching an eloquent

eulogy for the eternal repose of the soul

of a Churchill or a Caesar.

Well and good.

To disappear, to be used up, in such

like causes is undoubtedly providential.

I surely would not shirk if called upon

to brighten some illustrious act of history.

Indeed, I’d not decline to stay up late

with Hippocrates or Galen, or to melt away

upon the waxy altar of Thomas Becket,

or to blaze for days with eight of my cronies

in Rabbi Levy’s golden menorah.

But now, in the dead of night, the butcher’s kid

just woke up screaming from a charnel nightmare.

A grave robber has jumped in a grave to scrounge

a silver crown or two from the teeth of a banker.

And there’s a switchblade gang rolling dem bones

in the alley. I am the child of Father Dark

and Mother Night, rendered out of slaughter.

Who am I to say base uses fall beneath

the dignity of a taper, that light is squandered

on a dirty kid in need of light, that my few

short inches of string and tallow would

be wasted on a thief, or on a dicey gamble?

Retired Professor of English from Angelo State University, Chris Ellery is one of the founders of the ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton and a former poetry editor of Concho River Review. His most recent collection of poems is Canticles of the Body.

Laurence Musgrove 3/1/23 Laurence Musgrove 3/1/23

In Defense of the Awoken

Alan Berecka

March 1, 2023

“Wake the hell up, will you!”

my old man’s voice and anger

often grounded my mind’s flights

of fancy, returning me to the real

world and some assigned chore.

The state of awake-ness to him

was the core of a blue-collar ethos,

was the height of being, it meant

you cared enough to care, it meant

you wanted to get things right.

So to my friends who prefer to slumber

in the certainty of the Dark Ages,

before Galileo and the likes shook

the universe up, I plead as calmly

as I can, “Wake the hell up, won’t you!”