Stare Decisis

Jesse Doiron

August 21, 2022

Plaintiff begged us all consider,

And we did so in our way,

With unanimous opinion

His petition could not sway.

Thus, we moved to further matters, 

That would more legally apply  

To our established precedents,

Before deciding stones must fly.

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 in Texas, 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.

Let the Weapons Fall Silent

Carlos Loera

July 11, 2022

Let the weapons fall silent

Like a beautiful sunrise

Greeting the morning dew

Like the passing clouds

Covering the warm sun

Like a flight of birds on their journey south

The blossoming trees

An empty library

A simple thought

A quiet death

Let the weapons fall silent

Carlos Loera teaches at San Antonio College as an Adjunct Faculty member at San Antonio College. He paints, draws, and writes poetry.

Abortions in the Rough

Thomas Quitzau

July 10, 2022

I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare. And I have spent many years now, as a private citizen, as first lady, and now as senator, trying to make it rare, trying to create the conditions where women had other choices.

Hilary Rodham Clinton, 2008 Democratic Compassion Forum at Messiah College, Apr 13, 2008

Did she mean infrequently occurring? Uncommon?

Or did she mean excellent? Extraordinary?

I guess it depends.

I guess it depends.

Some are spontaneous, 

Some happen naturally, 

Some surprise us, 

Some are sought after, 

But one thing’s for sure:

Those fetuses, which

Don’t look like much

So small and simple

Having been gravidly borne

Demanding sacrifices

From those torn by pressures

Of this massive world

When cared for, when

Refined, if you will, after

Mere years, that burglar

Time, posing as king

Fools some into thinking

This life, after all, 

Is not as precious

As you might think.

Thomas Quitzau grew up in the Gulf Coast region and worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A self-ascribed member of the ZenJourno School of poetry, Tom recently relocated with his family to Long Island, New York where he teaches and writes.

An appeal to the court

Herman Sutter

July 6, 2022

to realize

what every kindergartner must learn:

that saving one thing requires

letting go of something else.

For instance:

there are eight perfect cookies

but also nine imperfect friends.

Something has to give.

Either we let go of the ideal

or we let go of a friend.

Ask Clarence Thomas who

he would vote off

such an island.

Each decision breaks 

another, each obscures

a road sign along the way,

leaving no clear path

back to before.

Open your eyes, my American friend

to the darkness you have lit 

with smoke; lead us home,

if you can.

Listen. Was that the sound of a cookie

crumbling under foot? Or the sound 

of so many ants suddenly

rising up?

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).

The Invisible World, Perceiving the Imperceptible

Dan Williams

July 4, 2022

We are winning the fight against an invisible enemy.

—Vice President Mike Pence

The title says it all, Mather’s The Wonders 

of the Invisible World, his righteous defense, 

of unrighteous trials, the wild histrionics, 

the girls thrashing, jerking, pointing fingers, 

the testimony of hostile neighbors, children

accusing parents, the paradox of pleas, perverse 

inversions of confession, damnation redeems

while innocence condemns, convicted by 

belief, by spectral evidence, by testimony 

of apparitions, unseen and evil, shadows flitting

 about, beating, torturing, urging villagers 

to sign the Book, a fiendish plague unleashed,

 devils and witches swarming, assailing, 

assaulting the upright most grievously, shape-

shifting specters witnessed and accused,

indicted for inflicting grievous suffering, 

the horrid courts, the nineteen executions,

ministers and magistrates alike perceiving 

the imperceptible, the invisible world.

Dan Williams is the Director of TCU Press and the TCU Honors Professor of Humanities. His second collection of poems, At the Gate, A Refuge of Sunflowers and Milkweed, is from Lamar University Literary Press.

Building a Raft

Vincent Hostak

July 3, 2022

I’m listening to the murmurings of grieving friends

while the AC hums then grinds out a decree:

              Every day grows hotter than the one before.

The thermostat is failing.

I read somewhere

when the land is hotter 

water-laden air cries for release.

My mind holds firm to mad-dream logic

imagines this machine can always do the work

conjuring cool relief in a manner protective,

affirmative, just, even kind.

My friends gather storm felled timbers

strip canvas off their curtains and treasured art

braid rope from nettles.

The tone of everything has changed 

it is the song of survival and escape

Sanction these sails each

Blessings for worthiness on the Seas.

We were here to build a country

to fashion cities out of ash

make them beautiful

astonish everyone each time they held

against invasions of wind and dust,

water and bust.

If they fell once or more

like Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Houston

we took another turn together to help them stand.

Deliberations, decisions pre-authorized

a leak, a puddle accrues

across the hottest week on record in D.C.

in thick water-laden air.

Persons in Robes, Men with Guns

If it please the Court,

what is the difference between these assemblies

when the endgame of both becomes

disfigure Reason

delegate possession of Her Beloved 

Autonomous Body 

to the rapist 

to the hungry lions

and their beguiled keepers?

Even here in the Known Safe Zone?

I’m leaning into this question 

Fight or Flight

when the past seems so much less 

a beacon for the future

and there is so much to fear in the present.

On a day again too hot to think my clearest:

Stay, struggle with Her

They, Them, All our Dearest?

How do we escape from a void?

We were here to build a country.

My friends now tell me 

for their safety of their lives

we must build a raft.

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.

Words and Promises

Carlos Loera

July 2, 2022

Words and promises

ingrained into our hearts

Constitutional freedoms

expressed by founding fathers

To ensure equality

where    

here

how

When our supreme leaders

seem to take

us back in time

Past hard pressed

victories

Take an oath for life

then 

Lie

Carlos Loera teaches at San Antonio College as an Adjunct Faculty member at San Antonio College. He paints, draws and writes poetry.

Remain Silent

John Rutherford

July 1, 2022

The police have no duty to protect you,

the Court decided that in nineteen eighty-one

and now they don’t have to remind you

of your rights now, oh what fun!

Stare decisis thrown out the window,

a six-three ruling, so don’t commit

a crime without memorizing 

the warning from nineteen sixty-six.

You have the right to remain silent,

any peep could end up in court,

call a lawyer and keep quiet,

they’ll get you one if you’re too poor.

The cops, they don’t have to protect you,

or warn you of your rights at all,

so what again is their purpose?

I guess to make us all feel small.

If you find yourself in a cop car,

on the long ride to the jail

remember to keep your mouth shut

and maybe you might just make bail.

John Rutherford is a poet writing in Beaumont, Texas. Since 2018 he has been an employee in the Department of English at Lamar University.

Keep a Sharp Eye

Milton Jordan

June 27, 2022

Keep a sharp eye on those five guys

(note as well the woman who joined them)

now claiming their love of life required

interference with difficult decisions 

some women must make with their physicians,

watch when the cases come round to executions

or interfering with the steady spread

of weapons meant for taking lives.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown. He is looking forward to to the forthcoming anthology, Lone Star Poetry, from the Texas Poetry Assignment, 2021.

Four Women

Michael Helsem

June 26, 2022

1.

Cold starts blowing down on me

I remember

I was living at the church

My neighbor Melissa

Poet & lesbian

Asked me as she sometimes did

For a ride

It was to the Routh Street

Women’s Center

I drove by there many times

She was meeting a girlfriend

Who was getting an abortion

There were people on the sidewalk with signs

I remember

The vivid red

Of the signs’ bloody pictures

I don’t remember

What it was they chanted

It was all

So long ago

2.

I would never ask such a thing

But she told me

She’d had four abortions

Or maybe it was three

3.

She was briefly semi-famous

When we were both in college

For an essay she’d had published

On her abortion

4.

She’d driven to New Mexico for one

But something happened

Her son is grown now

With kids of his own

She says she’s not political

M.H. was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterward, fish fell from the sky.