At a Time Like This

Donna Freeman

September 4, 2022

At a time like this

When bets are broken

When breath is held

When eyes don’t look

When fingers point 

When tall men become tiny boys

and small boys suddenly

 become men

   at a time like this.

And everyone shows their colors,

     black and white,

     true blue or red,

at a time like this.

But there is no time like this

when reality is not a reality show

and no one shows

their real colors

     not red, blue, 

     not even green

at a time like this.

What can we do,  

what is enough

at a time like this?

We can write.

We can paint.

We can still create

at a time like this.

And we pray

There will never be

a time like this

Again.

Donna Freeman’s poems have appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review, Blue Lake Review, Ocean State Poets Anthology, RI Public's Radio “Virtual Gallery,” and Imago gallery. Wickford Art Gallery will display another poem of Donna’s and publish it in a book in September for their themed show “Hope.”

The Prices of Freedom

John Rutherford

May 19, 2022

I never thought it was possible

that I, forever moving leftwards

would agree with Rand Paul on anything.

Forty billion dollars head to Ukraine,

is this the price the President said

we had to pay for freedom?

Some friends of mine, mothers all,

share recipes they got from their grandmothers,

baby formula in the old days, powdered milk,

karo syrup, a little water, warmed in a pot

because there’s none for sale. 

One plant in Michigan shuts down

and scalpers are on Facebook,

one can each for fifty dollars,

is this the price the President said

we had to pay for freedom?

A friend of mine lost his job

behind the counter of a convenience store

because he couldn’t afford the gas to get there,

$4.35 a gallon, so his car sits rusting on the lawn.

The Fed raises interest rates and from my bedroom

I can hear the bankers salivate, their lust for green

dripping, and I struggle to make rent and think

is this the price the President said

we had to pay for freedom?

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.

Sequels Often Bomb (or S. O. B.)

Thomas Quitzau

February 22, 2022

Are we due another big one? Big War?

Us vs. them? And then there’s Russian Bear.

US, Ukraine, EU: don’t poke the Bear!

Second sequels bomb at box offices

Oil & gas grease streets and pipes’ auspices

Under Baltic Seas, over lands too far.

Homerian, Orwellian we fall

Arcading head shots, cascading so small

Wee workers stand and yell to scare the Bear.

Super spreader arms, horse manure trends,

Scary messages the high def face sends, 

On who’s listening world order depends.

Scantily clad ruler on bareback horse,

“Big Guys” blast shows of military force,

“It’s all pre-emptive,” they tell us, of course.

Eliciting hatred, mocking chortles,

Gratuitous violence, spare mortals,

Sequels have bombed at theater portals.

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.

War Stories

Robert Allen

December 12, 2021

It wasn’t My Lai but the man’s cow was dead.

Family cow. Ox in ditch dead. Their livelihood.

Soldiers offered five hundred piastres for it.

Just over a dollar, my brother explains.

Living in the shadow of a court-martial,

my brother, a captain, was glad to get out.

Too much corruption, he sighs. Kickbacks and graft.

Goods shipped in for civilian compensation

diverted elsewhere. Ordered by the top brass

to say they were stolen, he wouldn’t sign off.

It’s worse today in Iraq, he continues.

Corporations run it, this business of war.

And a letter writer complains that the news

ignores the soldier handing out chocolate bars.

Robert Allen is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and five cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, Texas Poetry Calendar, Writers Take a Walk, and Poetry on the Move. He co-facilitates Gemini Ink's Open Writer's Lab.

Intelligence Quotient

Thomas Quitzau

September 20, 2021

Had Einstein not donated his brain,

Surely we would have found someone else,

Eventually, someone really smart—

Possessing delectable cortices

Titillating lobes to slice, have at it.

Or perhaps we could look elsewhere to know:

Intelligences artificial or 

Military, too hidden to see too

Remote to access too complex to grasp,

We dare not question for looking the fool.

Take it from one who used to make, fire, test

Weapons, the discharge of which was also

Invisible, laser light, hard to see

But an accurate guide for destruction

In conjunction with Sidewinders of death:

The next time you give orders, sir,

Don’t you dare tell me, yet again, 

That “our intelligence was good.”

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.

Congressman Clyde Corrects the Record on the Insurrection

Jerry Bradley

Septemmber 19, 2021

I stand by my statement as I said it.

The assault was not a revolt,

and we cannot call it that. To do so

is a bald-faced lie.  If you didn’t know 

the tv footage was from January 6th,

you would think it a normal tourist visit.

Furthermore, I never said your wife

had a mole on her butt.  I said

it felt like she did.

Jerry Bradley is University Professor of English and the Leland Best Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Lamar University. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he is the author of 9 books including Collapsing into Possibility. He is poetry editor of Concho River Review.

Perhaps

Darby Riley

September 7, 2021

The alien space ships

which people keep seeing

moving in strange ways

at the speed of thought –

what are they after?

Flying between stars

is beyond our ken.

It takes us eight months

just to get to Mars.

Do they hope to wake us

before we kill our world,

our selves?  Are they

envoys of the universe

on a rescue mission?

It’s hard to think

that they too might

be so deluded

as to take next quarter’s

profits as a stand-in

for The Great Spirit.

For our cosmic cousins

maybe greed is pointless,

power is for love,

and being – its endless beauty – 

is always to be celebrated.

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.

What It Wasn’t

Suzanne Morris

September 7, 2021

It wasn’t Covid,

said the bereft woman

requesting prayers

for the soul of a

young man

recently deceased.

So don’t think it was his fault,

I heard in her

note of caution.

And I thought back to when

no one seemed to know of

anyone nearby who had

developed Covid,

much less, had died of it

so if you heard someone

had died that way,

you would say, horrified,

It was Covid!

But that was before

there was a vaccine.

That was before Delta,

before what wasn’t

anyone’s fault

became what was.

That was before the

vaccinated bore the

unvaccinated

like a cross.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, most recently, Aftermath (SFA University Press, 2016). Until recently, her poetry appeared only in her fiction. However, last year she was invited to contribute seven poems to an anthology entitled No Season for Silence - Texas Poets and Pandemic, (Kallisto Gaia Press).

Why is the Devil a Black Man, Always?

Dan Williams

August 29, 2021

Why is the devil a Black Man, always?

in thousands of references, in demonology 

tracts scribbled by zealous monks, all white,

all attacking heresy, rebellion against God,

Christ the Prince of Light contending against

“the Power of Darkness,” in countless sad

stories accusing women of witchcraft,

the accused, time and again, tortured 

to confess, in intense agony, confessing 

to stop the torment, confessing they consorted 

with a Black Man, signing his book, dancing

wildly—at what, of course—Black Sabbaths, 

offering fealty to their dark lord, the anal kiss,

infernal, painful coupling, the devil’s two-

pronged phallus, the Salem narratives, sunless

texts, offer scores of examples, the devil 

“appearing ordinarily as a small Black man,” 

witchcraft the “Work of Darkness,” “a dark

subject,” “the devil improves the Darkness,” 

“Dark things now in America,” “in the shape 

of a Black Man,” “the Black Man whispered 

to her,” “she did ride by the Meeting house,

 behind the Black Man,” “by the assistance 

of the Black Man,” “the giant Black Man came 

to her,” “She looks upon a black man,” “the Black 

Man (as the witches call the Devil),” “a black thing 

with a blue Cap,” blackness ever iniquitous,

yes, of course, antithetical polarities, sightless 

oppositions of light and dark, good and evil, 

godly and pagan, celestial radiance preordained 

to crush the black hand, wickedness void of  

divine illumination, an omnipotent God allowing 

the Prince of Darkness, humanity’s scourge, those 

early Christians, fervent believers, comprehending 

only dualisms, a simplistic schematic to explain

the inexplicable, to account for misery, the Great

Chain of Being, white on top, black the bottom, 

God created differences, high and low, fortune 

and misfortune, and humans needed distinctions, 

the othering of the alien, us and them, yet a bigotry 

virulent and venomous, misperceiving a world 

split into black and white, without any gray.

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 forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.

NewsInc. Buys Texas Dailys

Milton Jordan

August 27, 2021

Dear Madam Publisher,

Regarding your new editor’s

introductory opinion piece:

The Morning Gazette may not employ

Clark Kent and Lois Lane, but it is our 

major metropolitan daily and “news

you can use” or “stories of interest

to all our readers” should not set limits

for our only paper’s reporters.

Wire service feeds and canned Sunday Supplements

might “leave our staff time to talk with our readers,”

but surely they leave most of your readers

with most of the story yet to be told.

Milton Jordan lives in Georgetown with the musician Anne Elton Jordan. His most recent poetry collection is What the Rivers Gather, SFASU Press, 2020. Milton edited the anthology, No Season for Silence: Texas Poets and Pandemic, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2020.

Hey Abboooott!!!! (Lou Costello)

Alan Berecka

August 19, 2021

Funny ain’t it, that in this state

that still enforces Blues Laws

for booze on Sundays, in this state

where gamblers have to hightail it

over the state line to feed eight liners,

in this state where marijuana

is still illegal for any purpose,

in this state where reproductive rights

are being eroded quicker than our coast,

in this state that doesn’t even trust

its citizens to vote, our governor claims

that wearing a mask to curtail COVID

is a matter of personal responsibility,

which has me hoping that any day

now I’ll be able to light a joint

and swig a beer at my local casino

early on some fine Sunday morning,

but, should these hopes prove false,

perhaps our governor might decide

to stop out-Trumping DeSantis as he

illegally gambles with so many lives.

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.