Broken Rooftops

JASON EDWARDS

April 8, 2020

and all the buildings collapsed into the stream

and cellos were played with broken sticks

and the water wasn’t safe to drink

and we were trapped in tiny spaces where we couldn’t feel the breeze upon our faces

and thunder boomed holes in the rooftops of our houses

and all you could see at night time was the light peering in from the stars

and the streets were empty 

and i looked south

and i looked north and there were no white horses

their stony shoulders moving like broken marble

and the supermarkets are filled with rabid dogs trying to snag the last of the beans and rice

and two older women get in a fist fight over their place in line and are hauled off by the police

and where has our dignity gone?

i want to wake up in a parallel universe

where we have painted our apartment shocking pink and orange

and changed out all the light bulbs to amber turquoise and purple 

and my husband and i waltzed closely in the iridescent light

a universe where people are kind to each other

where people are able to give hugs

the kind of hug that sends a lightning bolt up your spine and into the back of your neck

i want us be graceful

i want us to be earnest

and most importantly

i want us to be... free

JASON EDWARDS currently lives in Austin and has participated in the Dallas Slam Poetry scene for many years.  He is currently finishing up an autobiographical poetry novel.

The Patient at 10:00 am

SALENA PARKER

April 8, 2020

It is, once again, 10:00 a.m. in the morning; and, I am, once again, in front of my burlap curtain-covered window at my rickety, black desk attempting to be productive today by any means necessary. COVID-19 hasn’t met me—yet—and hopefully never will; however, I’m suffering from a sickness of some sort. Maybe you can help me? 

Here are my symptoms:

It all started with a cough. It was innocent enough, at first. In the early days, I’d be reading an article and then all of a sudden: my breath would catch, I’d put a hand up to my mouth, and release the breath in a loud, shaky wheeze. This would happen once or twice a day. It didn’t mean anything, I thought, it was just a cough. But then, as is its way, the media began to say that Coughs meant something horrible was coming. Coughing on the street near others transformed from a common happenstance to something to be repulsed at; this bodily function (and others) had become almost taboo. A few weeks later, a Cough escaped me as I was making dinner. I quickly scanned around the room; my eyes sharp and looking for passers-by. No one heard me, thank God. But then I realized: I was alone. 

Then came the tiredness. It wasn’t as weak as the Coughing or as rigorous as the pain in my lungs that would appear later in this ordeal. It was just there—watching me. Tiredness doesn’t have sharp claws or secret super-abilities like a fever; yet, it left me just as comatose as the flu. It watches me as I work on re-mapping my courses and doctoral work; Tiredness is standing over me now, waiting for me to slip up—to give in to its slow, seeping weariness. The worst part is I’ve seen Tiredness before. With these other symptoms, it seems stronger than it was back then. 

After about a week, Fever set in. Not only was my body wracked with chills that seemed to pierce my bones, but I’d turn on the TV or glance at Facebook and all I’d see is panic and denial and stress and a palpable fervor that leaked out of the screen and into my skin, making me colder. Did those people on the streets and in boats with their masks have what I had? Were they wrestling with Tiredness, Fever, and Cough, too? Or was this the thing the media was trying to warn me about: COVID-19?

Someone recommended exercise to get out (by this point, stay-in-place had been set in motion) so I did. I went outside and basked in the light grey sky and soft, chilly breeze. I relished in seeing nature and something that wasn’t confined in the walls of my apartment. Then I glanced over my shoulder to see a man scowling at me as if I was a piece of pond scum that had transformed into a living, breathing, thing. Maybe it was the Fever, or the Tiredness that did it, but I quickly turned around and scuttled back inside to my apartment (which at this point, feels more like a cage). 

Now, there’s a constant stabbing in my lungs. I think it’s not COVID-19, but from helplessness. It pops up as I scan discussion posts and read phrases like “I’m not ready for this”, or “I didn’t ask for this” on papers and the like. Sometimes, the pain ebbs away every few hours; other days, my lungs are wood and this pain is sandpaper and I am left with nothing to do but have my confidence scraped away layer by layer until I am left without confidence, or worry, or anything. On the worst days, the pain slowly increases from stabs to invisible, guttural punches that leave me constricted, wide-eyed and hyper-aware of how weak my body my is right now.

So, what do you think? Is this COVID-19? Or is it something more manageable? Do you have anything for me to take to get rid of this? More importantly, do you have anything for me to give to my students? Anything I could say or write that would help them with their Tiredness? Their Worry? Their Coughs and Fevers?

SALENA PARKER is a Professor of English at Collin College and is currently pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric at Texas Woman's University. She has published in CCTE Studies as well as the online newsletter National Geographic Travel. She lives in Denton, Texas. 

Little Things

T. WAYNE SCHWERTNER

April 9, 2020

It’s just a little thing,

this virus,

that fills your lungs with fluid.

Just a little.

Until you cry for air –

for just a little.

It’s just a little thing.

one percent,

hardly noticeable,

equaling thousands dead.

It’s just a little thing,

to stay at home.

No church, no movie, 

no dinners out, no school.

It’s just a little thing,

a few days, 

a few weeks –

a little sacrifice to save others.

Until the day we once again can 

go outside,

shake hands,

hug,

be together.

You know – the little things.

T. WAYNE SCHWERTNER is a native Texan, a wildlife biologist, and a professor of Wildlife Science at Tarleton State University.  He lives in Stephenville, Texas.

The Pande-moniac

SUMERA SALEEM

April 9, 2020

Gyring towards a uniformly ordered world 

Where waxwings hear other birds perching on 

Commonalities and not differences, 

Things falling together.

Though the hunger ridden air 

Is more dangerous to life than an unknown deadly code,

Ready to corrupt bodyfiles, everywhere 

An innocence of fear awakens 

A consciousness of being conscious of something. 

Lying is not a disease anymore, truth not a cure. 

Revelation of death is still a mystery at hand, 

A cycle of universe is folding into a new normal 

Of old struggle, the beginning to a new end 

When a magazine image troubles my sight, 

Somewhere in Delhi, wandering figures 

With rolled baggage on their heads, 

Some with children carrying on their shoulders, 

A blank glimpse of callous calls of death hanging in the air, 

Are shambling their sway, their shadows 

Slanting on dark grey roads as if the birds 

Flying back home were fluttering bewilderedly 

How the landscape had offered to them a new picture around,

Twenty years of this century of humdrum and noise 

Switched into a stony silence, somewhere of everywhere

This silence awaits to fall into pieces with a laughter of music.

SUMERA SALEEM is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan; gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab; and sub-editor in the department of English, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. She has published poems in national and international literary magazines.

And Now, A Word from Our Sponsors

PAUL JUHASZ

April 10, 2020

During the commercial break, twenty-six people died. CNN is keeping score, a metastasized number posted in the lower right corner.

Before the commercial break, a president bragged about his press conference ratings. After the commercial break, he’ll preen about how good a job he’s doing, because the dead don’t vote.

During the commercial break, someone plans their Spring Break, someone decides to hold a church services or a virus party, indifferent to ripple-effects or exponential growth.

During the commercial break, a woman writes a grocery list she’ll be too scared to use. Every person in the aisles suspect. Are you the person who’ll kill me? Am I the person who’ll kill you? 

During the commercial break, a nurse inventories N95 masks and implications a second time.

During the commercial break, bus drivers, garbage collectors, drive-through window-workers, gilded in new-found essentiality, offer themselves up in our stead.

During the commercial break, Verizon and CapitalOne want us to know we’re all in this together, as long as you pay your bill, as long as you send your stimulus check their way.

During the commercial break, a man thinks of his youngest son. They haven’t spoken since the divorce. Sometimes the father fears they’ve exchanged their last words but didn’t know it.

During the commercial break, an empty orange juice bottle, blown by an Oklahoma wind, wobble-skips across a parking lot. Its wind-moan, its hollow thunk, a dirge.

During the commercial break, a brace of deer flit across a weed-grown infield, kicking up forgotten chalk.

During the commercial break, three minutes and thirty-five seconds elapsed.

During the commercial break, twenty-six people died.

PAUL JUHASZ has read at dozens of conferences and festivals across the country, including Scissortail and the Woody Guthrie Festival. His work has appeared in bioStories, Red River Review, Voices de la Luna, Dragon Poet Review, Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way, and Speak Your Mind, and his comic journal, Fulfillment: Diary of an Amazonian Picker, chronicling his seven-month sentence at Amazon, has been published in abridged form in The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, then serialized in Voices de la Luna. He currently lives in Oklahoma City.

Study Abroad is a Learning Experience?

MARCY L. TANTER

April 10, 2020

Hyuk-min was excited to go to America,

To Texas where "everything is bigger!"

He packed his bags with Korean gifts,

Foods to share with new friends.

This would be the trip of a lifetime

And a dream come true.

Hyuk-min arrived in late January,

In Texas where the weather was warm,

A surprise for his Korean-winter-cold bones

But a good one!

He settled into his dorm room,

Became friends with his roommate.

Hyuk-min went to classes and bars,

To Texas BBQ and barbershops.

He was fitting in and having fun,

Everyone seemed to like him.

The virus news made everyone uneasy,

But college kids were safe.

Hyuk-min heard masks were being sent

To Texas where there were few.

"The United States now has more 

Corona cases than South Korea!"

In America, people were sick and dying,

College kids went on spring break.

Hyuk-min went to LA for his break,

From Texas to see his uncle.

"Maybe you should go home,

Not so many cases there."

But Hyuk-min wanted to stay,

To enjoy his time in Texas.

Hyuk-min got an email from school,

From Texas saying spring break was extended.

Classes were moving online,

Come back to campus but not to class.

He hugged samcheon goodbye,

Anxious to see his friends.

Hyuk-min took a plane from LA,

To Texas, a 3-hour ride.

He took a taxi to his dorm,

Expecting to see everyone.

He arrived on campus and

Saw no one there.

Hyuk-min stepped off the elevator,

In Texas, his temporary home.

He got to his room,

He pulled out his key

To open the door and

Stopped.

Hyuk-min felt afraid.

Hyuk-min stood stock-still,

In Texas, where he wanted to be.

On the door of his room

Signs had been hung:

"Go back to where you came from

And take your virus with you!"

Hyuk-min felt hurt and angry,

In Texas, where he should be happy.

"Yellow Peril! do not enter!"

"Get out of here, you Ch**K!"

He read the words over and over,

They became blurred.

Hyuk-min packed his bags

To leave Texas, where he'd wanted to be.

No roommate or friends to defend him,

No goodbyes to be said.

Hyuk-min flew home to Korea that night,

From Texas, where he'd wanted to be.

MARCY L. TANTER is a Professor of English at Tarleton State University, where she has taught since 1998.  Her areas of interest are American and British literature of the long 19th century and Korean Studies. 

Victory Garden Redux

KATHRYN JONES

April 11, 2020

Seeds I saved and stored in paper packets,

descriptions and dates scribbled on the fronts: 

OKRA – 8/19/18

CUCUMBER – 9/20/19

BASIL – 11/2/19

BUTTERNUT SQUASH – 3/20/20

RED CHILES – 3/25/20

Hope scattered on my kitchen table,

the beginnings of my victory garden. 

My grandmother planted one during World War II, 

and every year until her death – a big Southern garden

of collards and mustard greens, turnips and beets. 

My father planted one during the first big oil crisis,  

fearing he might lose his job and not be able to feed us – 

tomato plants staked in the ground and a fig tree,

clumps of grapes hanging heavy from the arbor. 

I planted gardens, too, not out of desperation or hunger 

but for pleasure, for the process, for the joy.

Then spring arrived and planting took on a new sense of urgency.

I pressed the seeds into starter pots with compost and a prayer. 

Romaine and leaf lettuce sprouted first, then spinach,

and green onions grown from severed roots, makings for a salad. 

Asparagus stalks shoot out of the ground like fingers pointing skyward,

heirloom tomatoes dangle their yellow lanterns of blooms,

zucchini plants unfurl their leaves like umbrellas to shield the heat.

I head out to the garden every morning and walk down the rows, 

looking to see what’s new. I go back in the afternoon to water,  

communing with the plants and telling them what’s going in the world, 

why we need them to bloom, be happy, thrive, produce. 

They tell me, with their new shoots and buds, to do the same thing. 

I spot the first ripe strawberry and pluck it from the stem, 

admire the blood-red flesh, sniff the sweet tang,

pop it my mouth, close my eyes, and see my grandmother

stooping to pull up turnips, and my father,

picking purple figs to slice and splash with cream.

This is my first taste of victory. 

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.

Recovery

KATHRYN JONES 

April 11, 2020

I fall

into the past 

the future foggy

in my mind

I curl

into a fetal position

yearning to crawl

back into the soup

I tremble

with an inner quake

crushing my heart

at the epicenter 

I dream

it’s all a nightmare

tricking me with

magical thinking

I awaken

to see a floating wall

faded rectangles 

where pictures once hung

I weep

for voices remembered

the silence echoing

through empty rooms

I see

the faces of my ancestors

beckoning me

I yearn but I cannot follow

I long

for those who have gone ahead

in this closed vessel

my love has no place to go

I wait

to cross the river 

until that day

life is a string of stepping stones

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. 

Shelter in Place

KATHRYN JONES

April 11, 2020

We call it the Middle of Nowhere, 

the Beautiful Oblivion, or just “the ranch,” 

although it’s not a ranch by Texas standards;

only 122 acres or so, mostly useless,

limestone ledges and hills consumed 

by mountain cedar and prickly pear, 

crawling with rattlesnakes and fire ants;

eight miles south of the nearest town, 

a mile off the highway on a rough road,

bumping, winding, dipping, climbing

to a ridgetop – our place.   

Why do you want to live way out there, 

our city friends asked when we moved to the ranch. 

No neighbors to help you, no cafes, no bars, 

no cinema, no concerts, nothing to do.

You’re lucky to live way out there,

they say now in the post-virus world. 

No neighbors to infect you, no cafes, no bars – 

they’re all closed, anyway. 

We hear the fear in their voices when they call,

afraid of what they see and what they cannot 

as they follow orders to shelter in place. 

Working from home leaves us more time now;

we hunt fossils on our ancient beach

surrounded by a sea of bluebonnets, 

or watch the aerial jousting of hummingbirds 

around the flutes of coral honeysuckle.

What would it be like not to see the sky,

or witness the ritual of day beginning and ending,

the sun sinking and catching the clouds on fire,

night extinguishing them, then flipping a switch

to turn on all the lights in the heavens.

We take solace in nature’s order as we shelter – in place.

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. 

Sapphic Lament

TESS COODY-ANDERS

April 12, 2020

So call out the name of our grief: untamed arc.

Like the curve of your unshaved cheek, glimpsed only 

now through digital lenses flat as gravestones.

Miss you, I miss you

I do. I forget the hour. Days lost, like good

money after bad; who are we, but dead weight

on the scale of time? If I place my thumb there

just so, you appear.

It’s uneven, this match-up: globe against God

who, it seems, has forgotten us yet again.  

This Goliath, so small no sling will stop it,

tramples on, trip wires

be damned. Still, hope returns to find a sticky 

note where grief left open the door to heaven,

so sure we would find our way out. In His name,

Oh Lord, hear our prayer. 

TESS COODY-ANDERS is an MFA student in Poetry at Texas State University and currently serves as Vice President for Strategic Communications at Trinity University. A former journalist, her stories and editorials have been printed in numerous publications, but her poetry has always been a private endeavor - until now.  

Pandemic Vibration

CHANTEL L. CARLSON

April 12, 2020

Seismologists say the world has grown

quieter.  Waves of trains no longer

find friction on steel now that we

remain alone in our homes where

we kneel and wait for the day we can

sit with loved ones again without

masks covering our laughs and don’t

wonder how the numbers will climb

from dozens to hundreds to thousands

bowing before closed coffins, how

the last breath was an intubated one, how

grandmothers see their grandchildren now

through glass panes, hands mirroring touch, 

how I was just in the French Quarter last month

on a crowded trolley to escape the rain

and made it through two weeks of quarantine

because I was only one cough away 

from inhaling death, something the toilet paper 

my neighbor had to stash can’t save her from

but she had to hoard it in the back kitchen corner

anyway.  I think it’s afternoon.  I think

I’ll step outside to find the bees rubbing

pollen from their hair to this flower 

and the next – hovering over Burford holly

in rapid vibrations, a dependable rhythm

of seismic sounds stirring the earth once again.

CHANTEL L. CARLSON teaches performance studies and creative writing at TCU. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Writing Texas, Unlocking the Word: An Anthology of Found Poetry, and The Louisiana Review.  Her poetry chapbook, Turning 25, was published by Nous-zot Press. Her one-act play, The Exhibit, was published by Next Stage Press, and her dramatic scene “Distance” was published in Writing Texas.

Tradition

MALLORY YOUNG

April 12, 2020

Are there well worn rituals for a quarantine?

Is it like Yom Kippur where you visit virtually

all your friends and family and anyone you’ve seen

and ask them for forgiveness, make amends?

Or is it closer to Thanksgiving, picking up the theme

of gratitude, seated round the table (via Zoom),

everyone revealing what they treasure most

within the limits sanctioned by the host?

Will it be an annual event, with special food

and awful wine, the parsley, for remembrance, dipped in brine?

In any case, the bread won’t be unleavened.

No one’s getting ready for a quick escape:

sheltered in safety while the daylight dies, 

sitting, watching, waiting for the dough to rise.

MALLORY YOUNG is an English professor at Tarleton State University. Most of her recent publications focus on women’s literature and popular culture.

This Easter

LYMAN GRANT

April 12, 2020

why not try incense this morning

light the fireplace for an hour

just long enough to cut the chill 

lime-green samaras of the silver maple

scatter the yard like little mittens

and the redbuds prickle the air

with violet pink and rose

they splatter the street descending

away down the hill behind the house

toward the park two blocks away

a random disease hides us 

from each other every home

its own quarantine an isolation ward

a light wind fluffs our peace flags

and I wait for someone to walk by

so I can go outside and wave hello

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.

On the last day for the last day of the world

HERMAN SUTTER

April 13, 2020

the leaves were green

and a breeze stirred the sunlit shadows.

A single brown leaf dropped

from somewhere high

only to stop 

midair

dangling, 

glistening as it turned, catching

the light and the shade.

It hung there as if a sign 

that the first thing to go

would be gravity,

but then I realized

it must be caught in a web

now broken.

On the last day before

the last day of the world

a spider rested, its work finally done.

Yet even now it descended,

gathering broken strands,

to begin again.

HERMAN SUTTER is the author of The World Before Grace (Wings Press) and a reviewer for Library Journal. His poetry has appeared in: Touchstone, Saint Anthony Messenger, Ekphrastic Review, Benedict XVI Institute, and By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville, 2019).   He received the Innisfree prize for poetry.

A poem for the pandemic

HERMAN SUTTER

April 13, 2020

The world is afraid

and so am I

but this morning I woke

early and went to the park where

I met a woman pushing a stroller

and as we chatted 

from an appropriate distance 

her little boy climbed out

and chased a squirrel

into a tree where he

stood and screamed up into

the high branches: Hello! Hello! Hello! 

We laughed and his mother

said: He’s in charge

of waking the squirrels.  

All of them.

And then I came home

and sat on the porch

at the glass topped table

with the rusty frame

and sipped my coffee 

and watched the pollen 

stirring like golden dust

and the sunlight slicing

a leaf with shadow and 

the breeze stirring a fleck 

of incandescent orange 

and black into the air where it

fluttered round the yard

and hovered over 

the table like a dove

while I sat with my cold coffee 

waiting for the world to end 

but nothing happened except

a bee settled on the lip

of my cup and wandered the edge 

of this beautiful morning 

with me. 

The world is afraid 

but the bee hummed,

filling the cup and reminding me: 

we are alive 

and that is enough 

if only we live.

HERMAN SUTTER is the author of The World Before Grace (Wings Press) and a reviewer for Library Journal. His poetry has appeared in: Touchstone, Saint Anthony Messenger, Ekphrastic Review, Benedict XVI Institute, and By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville, 2019).   He received the Innisfree prize for poetry.

On the Move

RICHARD DIXON

April 14, 2020

                                                                                 -end of March, 2020

Moved into a new house a month ago

just before the ominous drumbeat began

and this fatal virus, another few weeks

before red-haired bumblers felt forced

into anything resembling action

and now find myself in self-quarantine

nearly everything ends up closed, this stark

hyper-relief contrast between any attempts

to settle in, get inured to the rhythm

and ebb/flow of this house

(and blues of it all, dammit), the subtle

groans a dwelling makes while it settles

not in terms of time but function

This house, in early evening hours, calms

in intended effect, its own cadence

I think of paired rhythms, matched heartbeats

too close to myself

This evening I step outside to back patio

and face west; faint afterglow in the tinted silver

of a skinny crescent moon in the growing dark

as a nice breeze picks up and attempts 

to fill me, too, with something positive

and satisfied, ready to move on

to the next good and hopeful thing

RICHARD DIXON is a poet and essayist living in Oklahoma City. He is a retired high school Special Education teacher and tennis coach. His work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Red River Review, Dragon Poet Review and many others, including the Woody Guthrie anthologies and the new Oklahoma poets anthology. He has been a featured reader at Full Circle Bookstore, Norman Depot, Shawnee and the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival.

Orchids in April

KATHRYN JONES

April 14, 2020

It sits on the windowsill, soaking up light.

Green leaves as thick as leather, 

roots creeping out of the pot

like thin, bony fingers

searching for something to grasp. 

Every spring, flower spikes shoot up, 

buds swell, and the orbs burst open, 

unfurling flat white petals like moth wings

and a crimson lip that juts out, begging 

an insect to taste the sweetness inside. 

Orchid blooms last for weeks without 

much tending and so must I,

soaking up light by the window.

My bony fingers creep out of my vessel, 

searching for something to grasp.

I reach out and touch the rubescent lip –

such tenderness, such fearlessness

to bloom in this world right now.

My raw heart opens and beauty holds out

her hand. With gratitude, I grasp it. 

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. 

Upside World

SHERRY CRAVEN

April 15, 2020

It’s a time when the world is turned

upside down: trees are rooted

in the sky, wispy clouds reach arms up

from the blades of grass and weeds.

Rain swirls up and down and side to side

from the thirsty earth, cooling a hot holocaust.

Disease is rolling into our lives like

a Midwestern tornado, leaving little

behind, only broken bits, slithers

of heart and soul and body, and even love.

Normal will never be normal.

The only antidote, the only defense

is we ourselves. Hold the center tight;

it will hold. Ventilators, masks, six

feet, gloves, aloneness, all float around

like the sandwich and cup of coffee on

a NASA spaceship where gravity does not exist,

objects floating in no sequence, no order.

The order is us. Gravity is

within. The spiral of emotion,

fear is spinning so grab it and draw

it to you and use the gravity of heart

and belief that, by god, the center will hold

in spite of the death carried by a microscopic

tiny virus we can’t see but we can beat

because the human center can hold against

the torrential winds of an invisible enemy.

SHERRY CRAVEN has published poetry in numerous journals and anthologies and has had a poetry collection Standing at the Window published by vacpoetry in Chicago. She has also had flash fiction and creative nonfiction published and read poetry on NPR, as well as being included in Quotable Texas Women.

Pandemic Haiku for April Mornings

STEVE WILSON

April 15, 2020

Asimmer, Spring blooms,

sings its extravagant greens.

Bells call from shut schools.

STEVE WILSON has published poems in journals and anthologies nationwide.  He is the author of five collections of poetry, the latest entitled The Reaches (2019). He teaches at Texas State University.

Quarantined

KEN WHEATCROFT-PARDUE

April 16, 2020

The pages in unused libraries

quiver ever so slightly

with the desire

to be touched again.

Floors in museums

wait to be paused on

by someone, 

by anyone

contemplating 

centuries-old brushstrokes.

Desks at schools

long to feel students 

as they carelessly plop 

into their seats,

while excitedly 

spilling out 

the latest gossip.

KEN WHEATCROFT-PARDUE has had poems published in The Texas Observer, California Quarterly, Borderlands, Barbaric Yawp, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His volume of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) is forthcoming this summer.