Desperado in Palo Duro

KATHRYN JONES 

April 16, 2020

If I could run away, where would I go? 

I know.

 I take a road trip, if only in my mind. 

 I’m driving the long road from Canyon to Palo Duro, checking my rearview mirror,  feeling like I’m on the lam. Nothing in sight except for land and sky. Nothing much in any direction except a lone windmill drumming the wind and pumping water into a concrete trough mobbed by cattle with no tree for cover, no shelter in sight. 

The world out here on the Llano Estacado feels like a rectangle so flat you can see the edges. I drive a bit farther and the crack begins in the tabletop. With every mile the crack yawns wider and deeper until the Earth exposes its insides.

I drive toward the abyss, check in at the state park station, get my campsite number, and drive down, down, down into millions of years carved and sculpted by wind and water, ochre and vermillion striped cliffs and hoodoos shaped like chimneys and lighthouses. The sinking sun throws darts of fire into the violetness descending into the canyon.  Cattle turn into ebony ghosts moving along the rim. The ivory moon rises, clouds caught on the mesquite thorns.

 I pitch my tent, eat some slices of cheese, crackers, and grapes for dinner, wash it down with a camp cup of wine, and watch the electric sky. There goes a silver-tailed star falling into the nothingness. I crawl inside the tent, unroll my sleeping bag, and lie on my back, listening to the echoes of time and the coyotes’ refrain – a howl from the bowels of black space. 

 When the sun peeks over the rim, a woodpecker awakens me, squawking from the top of a dead mesquite tree. Another day, another chance to outrun the invisible demon. Surely it cannot find me at the bottom of Palo Duro. If it does, no one is safe anywhere. 

 I cook eggs on a camp stove. Shadows move on the ground.  I look up to see buzzards — nature’s dark angels – circling above in the big blue sky. I point at them with my fork.

 “You ain’t getting me,” I tell them. “Not just yet.”

KATHRYN JONES is a longtime journalist, essayist, author, and teacher. A regular contributor to The New York Times and  a contributing editor and former writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine, her essays have been published in Texas Monthly and in two 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 ). She currently teaches journalism at Tarleton State University and is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor (The Last Picture Show, The Wild Bunch) 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. 

Spring, Quarantine 2020

YAZMIN ALIYAH JIMENEZ

April 17, 2020

YAZMIN ALIYAH JIMENEZ is currently a senior at Texas A&M International University. Majoring in English with a minor in Creative Writing, upon graduation, she plans on becoming an English Teacher at her former high school. Despite what we have temporarily lost, she looks forward to celebrating with all of the Classes of 2020! 

Coronavirus: Don’t Touch

STEVEN T. MOORE

April 17, 2020

The President is on TV again

bright red tie swaying like a flag

on summer days where children 

hopscotch and drink lemonade 

the color of sun. But the sun 

is closed today and everything else 

as health officials 

standing with Trump

clutching black notebooks

resembling the ones 

I carried to school

holding grammar and math 

lessons in place.

Mother kisses me 

hugs me tight

wishes me a good day. 

She sleeps underground now

and I wonder what she would 

say about all this and the barking

orders for us to remain 

inside our homes

but if you can’t 

no touching 

no hugging

no handshaking 

no kissing

stand six feet apart 

wear plastic gloves

a mask and shades

you may die if you don’t.

It’s been a week now and I am 

out from my cage for essentials

grabbing bread, eggs, and milk

before they sell out. 

Can’t find toilet paper again

metal shelves that should house them

are empty

barren

cold

unwelcoming.

Twisted faces around me

gasp in horror at the sight of 

nothingness stretching out for yards. 

By accident my covered elbow 

brushes against a customer 

wearing a Texas Rangers ball cap

black homemade mask

covering face and teeth perhaps brushed with Crest

making no eye contact

rushes away with a confused little boy

wearing a yellow t-shirt

sitting up front in the cart

hesitating to wave or smile at me

clutching a weathered stuffed teddy bear.

At the checkout stand

the cashier quakes with eyes shouting

Don’t touch me at all

because we look like those lepers 

we studied in Sunday Bible school.

I go home to an empty house

think about those families 

behind locked doors on my street 

hugging holding each other 

think about those couples 

who are able to kiss

who are able to touch. 

Think about that married cashier who

has no idea what I am going through 

as I sit here and long for an accidental brush 

to warm my skin. I turn off the lights 

pray for the ghost of my mother

to cradle and sing me to sleep.

STEVEN T. MOORE received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska. He enjoys writing poetry and is the author of The Cry of Black Rage in African American Literature and two children's books. He is Professor of English at Abilene Christian University. 

Psalm for Those Who Die Alone

E. D. WATSON

April 19, 2020

You never thought it’d be like this. 

Nor did your parents, thumbing 

the rosary in the hospital garage, 

unable to come in. All the things

you left undone, your desk in disarray

half a cup of coffee, cold and scummy

in your favorite mug. You thought

that you’d get well, until today.

Today you know. And though it hurts

you want each breath. Oh friend,

I hope when you let go, the room

is full of everyone you ever loved

who went before: Prince, your grandma,

Kenny Rogers. That girl you waited tables

with. May you know an ecstasy. May it fill

and draw you in. Bless your body

for it has been faithful. In whatever ways 

you have despised it, it carried you to now. 

Let go the coffee cup. The bed rail. 

Let gratitude burn you up. May you pass 

like a moth, lovesick for the flame.

E. D. WATSON currently serves as the Poet-in-Residence for St. Mark's Church in San Marcos, Texas. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University and is pursuing certification at the Institute of Poetic Medicine. Her poems and stories have been published in a number of literary journals. 

Psalm for the Unemployed

E. D. WATSON

April 19, 2020

o that you could put this poem in a sandwich

and eat it, that you could pour ketchup on it

and feed your kids. o that you could fold it 

like a bill and give it to your landlord, in lieu

of rent. o that I could bid the angels shake

the boughs and instead of words, pears came 

down, or coins or shoes. o that I could sing

your hands to work again, that the barkeeps 

pour their drinks again and tend the thresholds

of our leisure with measured cups of medicine

o that each latched door be opened, that empty

markets swell with wares, that women take up 

again their baskets to fill with flowers and bread, 

that bricklayers take up their spades and mend 

what’s gone tumbling into disrepair. o that the singers

howl their songs once more to rapt arenas—and you 

whoever you are—that you fall into bed again each night

bones ringing with a labor for which you’ve been paid.

o that you sigh in satisfaction before sleeping

for some good thing you’ve done, or made.

E. D. WATSON currently serves as the Poet-in-Residence for St. Mark's Church in San Marcos, Texas. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University and is pursuing certification at the Institute of Poetic Medicine. Her poems and stories have been published in a number of literary journals. 

It’s Bananas

SARAH K. LENZ

April 20, 2020

I heard on a radio report

that since the pandemic 

has closed down schools, whole-

sale fruit sellers don’t know

what to do with thousands

of single bananas—the supermarkets

only want bunches and bunches.

When I was a kid, I tried

purposefully, to slip on

peels. Was it really as easy

as I’d seen on TV? It wasn’t.

When Sandy was in intensive care

dying, as her kidney function ground

down, I remember after we left,

I saw in the parking lot a banana peel,

frozen solid, black, and curled in on itself.

Then there was this afternoon, twelve

rollie-pollies, munching greedily, in what

must have been bug ecstasy—on a

sun-yellow slip of banana peel, in the

center of my green lawn.

SARAH K. LENZ’S writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, The Fourth River, Entropy, and elsewhere. Three of her essays have been named Notable in Best American Essays, and she received the New Letters Readers’ award in nonfiction. She teaches composition and literature at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Opposites Attract

JEANIE SANDERS

April 20, 2020

This virus repels and fascinates me,

appearing suddenly as a strange 

dark misshapen object in the corner,

threatening to spring at me

any moment, sweeping me away.

On the day John Kennedy was shot,

we were so horrified but kept

watching TV to get the details

as a young woman in a bloody suit

swept into our living rooms.

JEANIE SANDERS is a poet and collage artist.  Her poems have appeared in The Texas Observer, The San Antonio Express News, Texas Poetry Calendar, and several anthologies. Her most recent book is The Book of the Dead, Poems and Photographs, and she is poetry editor for the 2021 Texas Poetry Calendar.

Killing COVID-19

FERNANDO ESTEBAN FLORES

April 21, 2020

Pandemics befit language

& shake poetics of its cold old doldrums

Even the word sounds sanitized & safe

Distancing itself from the old-world view

Plague

Contagion

Disease

Epidemic

We’ve dealt with these Angels of Death before

The Bubonic Plague the Spanish Flu of 1918

Little children would jump rope reciting

I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza.

I opened the window,

And in-flu-enza.

Like ill-suited guests or shoddy strangers who show up

Unannounced knocking at the door waiting to

Be acknowledged admitted we knew

They were around always loitering lingering

Like zealous zombies wandering our streets

Some in full view others emerge at sundown

Still a few on the periphery of our sight

We caught a glimpse & hoped they’d go away

Out of sight out of mind

Like the rag worn cliché

& now we tout the terms “social distancing”

“sheltering in place” as if they were talismans

Or magic spells chanted like mantras

Different from what we’ve done before

Stores today packed with people trying to

Keep their distance from each other

Avoid contact of any kind wielding

Shopping carts stacked with goods

Like Achilles’s shield

To ward off unexpected blows

From irate consumers unaccustomed

To the current custom

The president blames

The previous resident

Rejects responsibility

Saying stay calm this will go away

While he castigates the world

With all his wily twitters

Hospitals pale & ail

Schools shuttered

Businesses bail

Bars & restaurants keep

Customers at bay

The stock market drops

To historic lows

Workers laid off

The streets deserted

Stray dogs growl at passing shades

Bound for Dante’s infernal inferno

Everyone self-quarantines

In the cushy solace of solitude

All sterilized & cleansed

With nowhere else to go

San Antonio poet FERNANDO ESTEBAN FLORES graduated from UT at Austin with a B.A. in English, taught secondary school writing, and was recently honored with an ELLA Award 2018 and an Arts & Letters Award 2019 from the San Antonio Public Library System for promoting literacy and education. He has multiple publications.   www.madwarbler.com

Keep Quiet -Homage to Pablo Neruda during COVID-19 Quarantine

GRACE MEGNET

April 21, 2020

Gaia holds us cradled in her lap 

and fondles our sweaty hair.

Wealth, walls, and flags rot

like smelly shoes outside the door.

I count to twelve, she says,

you all keep still.

We are all together in sudden strangeness.

When will this end? we fuss.

Don’t move your arms so much, she says.

Fishermen don’t harm whales.

Workers look at their callous hands.

Gaia takes a breath,

and silence interrupts our sadness.

You will understand, she says.

I count to twelve.

GRACE MEGNET holds an MFA in painting. She is an Associate Professor at Lamar State College - Port Arthur and a Piper Professor of 2019. She grew up in Switzerland. Twenty years ago, she came to the United States. Signing up for a creative writing class was her last frontier, and Jerry Bradley made her an American. If she did not have to work, she would spend her life painting, making pots, and writing. She came to TACWT in 2013 when she won the non-fiction category for the first time. She lives in Beaumont, TX with her husband who keeps teaching her English. 

Stockpile the Sun

JESSICA NENO CLOUD

April 22, 2020

It seems possible

With small solar panels

We would be able to

Take the light we see 

During the day 

Saving it so it can be used 

To make light 

During the night 

We could stockpile the sun

If we had enough batteries

Or tomatoes

Or basil

Or corn

How odd to stockpile 

Goods that give

Up their energy so readily

And regularly

But we have needs 

That don’t conform to nature’s timeline

So we try to stockpile

As much sunlight as we can as

Batteries

Food

Toilet paper

Books

Wooden houses

Oil

Gasoline

For from light you have emerged 

And unto light you shall return

JESSICA NENO CLOUD is a poet, mama of two wild things, and higher education fundraiser who lives in Hattiesburg, MS. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Southern Mississippi. You can read more of her work on her Instagram page @jessicacloudpoetry.

Journal Entries in the Time of COVID-19

JACINTO JESÚS CARDONA

April 22, 2020

This unpleasant time calls for some sort of anti-depressant

mine is writing

Instead of COVID-19 I tend to write COVET-19 to covet to desire 

what belongs to another COVID-19 covets our lives our relationships 

our livelihoods our love for one another our freedom 

Thursday at 9:20 a.m. April 2, 2020 in San Antonio

San Fernando Cathedral rings its bells for one minute

a moment of silence for COVID-19 victims

I Google John Donne’s poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and recite 

“Therefore, send not to know/ For whom the bell tolls. /It tolls for thee.”

Remote is the antidote so I look up words in RhymeZone 

that rhyme with antidote: creosote denote float rote wrote 

I like the near rhyme azote: whip, lash, scourge

Azotazo: golpe grande dado con el azote 

I take my dog Dulce out for a walk her Schnauser nose loves 

the smell of creosote on a telephone pole bluebonnets in bloom

In my random COVID-19 readings I learn Pushkin told Decembrists

exiled in Siberia that hope is the sister of misfortune

The more online I become the more digital I become 

the more I think of papyrus

I am stressed I digress I recall the old Mexican jingle 

for the Mexican analgesic Mejor Mejora Mejoral

I asked my high school students in this time of COVID-19

to respond to Blaise Pascal’s observation “I have discovered 

that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, 

that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.” 

Pensées trans. A. J. Krailsheimer

JACINTO JESÚS CARDONA teaches English at Incarnate Word High School and Trinity University Upward Bound Program. He is the author of Pan Dulce, a poetry collection. 

In(con)trovertible

LINDA SIMONE

April 23, 2020

— March 24, 2020

Because I heed my inner music,

speak with pigment or words

I proclaim myself introvert.

In a hummingbird’s wingbeat, hours fly.

In pockets of solitude, 

loyalty only to the page. But life changes.

I dance a jig to my husband’s Good morning,

treasure bowls of penne, view The Valkyries.

His embrace like a slow, deep breath.

We crave the river, daily dose

of mountain laurel, blooming rose.

Pom-Pom ducks congregate—social distancing ignored. 

My new-found extrovert delights 

in email, phone, Zoom

while voices of newscasters drone—a dirge, a balm.

LINDA SIMONE’S most recent poetry collection is The River Will Save Us (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Poets to Come (Local Gems Press), commemorating Walt Whitman’s Bicentennial. Her poetry and art have flourished since moving from New York to San Antonio.

Three Haiku/Pandemic

ZEE MINK-FULLER

April 23, 2020

Sheltering in place

Avoiding social contact

Existing, is all

Sun touching pale eyes

Warming dark doubt, birthing light

Spirit shouting hope

Masked strangers smile

Sad eyes, crinkled, yearning, longing

Plead freedom's cure

ZEE MINK-FULLER writes from rural Texas, where she is able to find joy in untamed nature at her doorstep.  When she is not writing, she creates art from found objects, such as metal, glass and wood.  She is widely published and is currently working on a book of short stories.

Pandemonium

JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN

April 24, 2020

general chaos, wild disorder, distinctly askew  -

this world I thought I knew

in torpor of lock down I wonder how it sits

with M. , who went from being

locked up 

to this free, locked down, held in place, 

sentence without period

time without boundary

and the only hope any of us have – 

good behavior

JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN is the author of five books of poetry. The most recent, WEST, poems of a place, was published by Wings Press in 2017. LaVilla-Havelin is the Coordinator of National Poetry Month in San Antonio, the Poetry Editor for the San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle, and a teacher, critic, and community arts activist. He was the City of San Antonio’s 2019 honoree with the Distinction in the Arts Award for Literary Arts.

The Language

JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN

April 24, 2020

some phrases, all too appropriate, slipped into usage

and then almost universally applied

slip just as completely, out

when something happens –

Tim Duncan and David Robinson were

referred to as the twin towers, until

that September day in 2001

and then, never again

and now in a dark time of contagion and fear

no one seems to refer to something that is an overnight

sensation on social media, as 

having gone viral

watch for the slow drift of the

word – distant –

through the curve.

distant cousins, even anti-social ones

will slowly become

just kin

the world changes

the language adapts

JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN is the author of five books of poetry. The most recent, WEST, poems of a place, was published by Wings Press in 2017. LaVilla-Havelin is the Coordinator of National Poetry Month in San Antonio, the Poetry Editor for the San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle, and a teacher, critic, and community arts activist. He was the City of San Antonio’s 2019 honoree with the Distinction in the Arts Award for Literary Arts.

Quarantine Check

DEBBIE WILLIAMS

April 26, 2020

                -1-

Cooing of a zebra dove

turns out to be a mockingbird.

Tones like sunrise 

shatter into diving screeches over my head

the further I walk under the nesting tree. 

Dead limbs masked by undeveloped green.

The nest, exposed only by flapping and original cries.

I step quickly, lightly away from the tree, 

away from the crunching, 

from threatening the family.

An otherness of song returns.

                  -2-

Stepping back into the curbs, 

I kick through veins of leaves,

crashed, crispy.

Yesterday, leaf blowers whined, 

dismissing the last of autumn in the dregs of March.

I can’t decide how so many crispy mounds 

nestled into hub caps, along rims of concrete.

Where do the dead hide?

                   -3-

My phone pulses, 

my oldest child’s first 

call of the day. 

“Yes, Sweet Girl, I’m home.

I’m ‘sheltering in place—’ 

I was taking a walk.

Just a mockingbird and dead leaves.

Now, Honey, we’ve had this talk. 

You’ll do fine without me. 

No, I have no plans for dying any time soon. 

Yes, promise I’ll be careful.

Love you, too.”

I lie about being home,

about wearing a mask.

I gaze back at my house.

Silencing my ringer, 

I cram the phone into a jean pocket,

spin, crunch further away. 

My steps splinter a coo.

DEBBIE WILLIAMS has published creative non-fiction in The Concho Review and Ten Spurs, and co-authored The Monstrous Discourse in the Donald Trump Campaign: Implications for National Discourse. She received her doctorate in English from Purdue and currently teaches at Abilene Christian University where she also directs the writing program.

Under a COVID Sun

KARYN SUGGS

April 26, 2020

acrylic on canvas

With ears intact, I purposefully glide 

Therapeutic wands across a stark plain. 

Wispy strokes of visions imagined through 

The weight of the perilous times we share.

Seething shades of sunflower pallets make

Crude portrayals of confining spaces.

Joy shines through the eminent doom as we,

Humanity, are lifted by a song.

KARYN SUGGS is a K-12 educator and graduate student working towards her PhD in Curriculum & Instruction at Texas Tech University, specializing in Language, Diversity, and Literacy. 

The Mind is a Jumble

ALICIA ZAVALA GALVÁN

April 27, 2020

The days

a confusing cycle

of thoughts, imagined events,

gestures, movements

physical places

traveled without leaving

replayed

backward

forward

then

backward

again

Each time

persons moving in

and out of an instant

long or brief

both planting doubt

in the brain

invisible

then visual

until the cycle

creates a deception

for the ear and or eye

almost realistic

sometimes

true and surreal

a composite of images

that seem

happened just a breath ago

perhaps nature

lending a hand

by an early or late

sunrise and sunset

Primarily a poet, ALICIA ZAVALA GALVÁN has published six collections of poetry, most in a bilingual format. Much of Galván’s research activity has centered on the seventeenth century feminist nun of Colonial Mexico, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She is also a painter and editor. 

Turn of Events

ANDREA PEREZ

April 27, 2020

Trapped in a cage of our own making

Be it the Flu, SARS, Ebola or a new pandemic

It gives me an enormous headache

History repeats itself

We must have missed the memo

Warning signs End of Times

Prophesies and predications

From centuries of mystics

The year 2020

Equivalent to “perfect vision”

So optimistic 

Hindsight

Reflective

YET

Three months in

We sit at home in isolation

The entire world is finally listening

Only through social distancing

Social media is binding us together

Zoom, Facebook, Snap Chat and Instagram

Anxiety runs high 

Panic in the streets

Central park is dark

A pandemic that doesn’t discriminate 

Asymptomatic till it’s too late 

ANDREA PEREZ is a Corpus Christi native. She started writing in the Fall of 2019 after the tragic death of her dog Max to distract her from grief. She hopes to write a children’s book about Max soon.  She also enjoys yoga, meditation, and Reiki.

SOS

LYMAN GRANT

April 28, 2020

Someone reported the bodies

Piled in the freezer

At the old folks’ home,

And a mayor was fined

For violating his own city’s

Stay in place order

To purchase a six-pack

Of chilled imported beer

At the convenience store.

We are all finding it hard

To live with ourselves.

Like vampires we avoid daylight

And mirrors. I don’t know

How many nights I can hide

From Netflix. Where I live

Winter has not released its grip,

And each morning I struggle

To pull back each finger

From around my throat.

I am hoarding something

And I don’t know what it is.

It is piling up in my coldest

Regions. I am reporting myself,

Now, before there’s a crime

I cannot explain.  Come,

Come quickly, and maybe

Bring us both a couple of beers.

LYMAN GRANT is the author of several volumes of poems.  His most recent 2018: Found Poems and Weather Reports was published this spring by Alamo Bay Press.