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.