Making Memories

KARYN SUGGS

March 29, 2020

Way around the enormous structure of limited resources

Foragers assemble, six feet apart,

Waiting for the gatekeepers to allow entry:

“No more than 50 patrons at a time!”

Time to swallow hard again to stifle my tickling cough.  

Allergies… right?

I see faces averting, eyes not encouraging the forgone greetings of yesterday.

Yesterday, I was a hugger.  Were you?

Let’s greet one another with an elbow tap!

I don’t have six-foot elbows, and by the way, 

I coughed into mine earlier, so you don’t want to tap that

That which has consumed all of humanity,

Robbing us of our concentration, our motivation, our destinations home and abroad,

Forcing us to be alone, together.

Together alone is ideal for some.

Distancing socially is my son’s dream come true.  

His life ambition to be a pro-gamer no longer interrupted by adult responsibilities.

He has been training for this all his 20something years.  

Years from now, he might remember this as one of the best times of his life.

I wish you the memory of mere inconvenience and quality family time.

Those who have lost will not remember this that way.

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. 

In the Lake of My Future

KEN HADA

March 30, 2020

There will be nothing to remember,

nothing to anticipate or be anxious.

Silence will blend with sun,

the depths glimmering honest green.

There will be birds, for sure, winging

overhead, and life swimming

in the dark shadows of rock.

Death will be necessary, I guess.

If it has to be, let it be good death –

anything but this plague called loneliness.

KEN HADA is the author of seven collections of poetry, with an eighth manuscript appearing in 2020. His work has been published and awarded in various places such as Western Writers of America, National Western History Museum, SCMLA, The Writer's Almanac, and The Oklahoma Center for the Book.

Ceremony

PAUL JUHASZ

March 30, 2020

For a soundtrack, I try for something expansive to drown out Anderson Cooper’s reporting and the all-too expert analysis of Drs. Gupta and Fauci, but also something appropriately circumstantial, the right blend of looming menace and uplifting hope. I select Greig’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and begin.

I use a razor blade for the garlic. I want it so thin it liquesces into the butter in perfect embrace. 

I do the onions next; bending my fingers palmward, presenting knuckles only to the blade’s sundering smirk, I blink at the pungency and slice translucent.

The two plum tomatoes I scavenged from the panic-plundered bins at Wal-Mart are not perfect, but they’ll do, rinsed and diced and patient in a stainless steel bowl next to the range.

The basil sits in a cup of water, clinging to illusions of life just a little while longer.

The chicken breast, coated in a mix of panko and parmesan, waits in the cold dark of the refrigerator.

The butter and garlic symbiotic, I unroll the chicken tenderly into the pan. A hiss of protest unzippers the kitchen with hints of sage, a promise of oregano. Five minutes per side, then the taut goldenness removed to the oven while I make the sauce.

A splash of wine to deglaze, morsels of meat loosened from the pan’s plain. More butter, with the onions in tow. The tomatoes join the dance shortly after. When they’ve given up their liquid, I’ll add the cream. The transubstantiation of basil comes last.

I take time with the presentation. The plate undersauce, I lay a bias-cut chicken half horizontally across, its partner angled on edge, parabola-less missile. Additional sauce drizzled over the whole, the rest reserved in a bowl in case of need. Two last leaves of basil, held in reserve, draped across in memoriam.

I pour a glass of Marqués de Cáceres Crianza 2014, breathing the while at the counter corner, and I sit down to a dinner for one.

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.

Coronavirus Cento

LISA TOTH SALINAS

March 31, 2020

with lines by Texas poets

In a crisis of quietness, 

the chasm widening between our bodies, 

separation is an illusion. 

How long can a heart begin the day 

raging at the window 

to the world from our cloistered realm, 

tuning in to silence juxtaposed against the steady rhythm of this still self-sufficient heart? 

A city rises skyward, each slab and brick

wondering why 

we will only wave as we pass by 

across sidewalks and driveways.

And I look across an apocalyptic evening: 

the expanse of grass emptied of students on break, 

walls of a world crumbling from fault-laden cracks,

the same quiet that closes 

as if every dead and dying thing 

lay on a bed of white hospital sheets. 

Some nights it burns at the center, this quiet. 

Misery, we know, is too much company. 

It's a tear-clogged throat, a white tombstone grave. 

Not one alone can carry it. 

Everyone else's tragedy is mine. 

All the danger 

is the same in every language.

Your healthy & sick cells 

accumulate one sunrise at a time, 

those circlets overlapping, life to life 

stretched to breaking with the heaviness 

in the midst of all this heat and death. 

Although the will to stay is growing weak, 

if it has to be this way –

pulling in and falling back to an unthinkable "If" – 

it’s not all bad. Hell has its comforts.

It is a sad, sweet, brief delaying. 

The blue umbrellas side by side, the people looking away…

That is a kind of hope. 

How they reach for something greater than themselves: 

the path of sunlight through leaves, birdcalls beyond, 

how to work harder, together with compassion, 

to shelter in the usual,

to mend and overcome these scars.

LISA TOTH SALINAS is a poet and genealogist. She is author of Smallest Leaf (2015), awarded the Eakin Manuscript Prize by the Poetry Society of Texas. Her poems have appeared in Presence, Encore, St. Austin Review, mater et magistra, The Houston Chronicle, and elsewhere. Lisa is a featured poet within the collaborative poetry and visual art exhibit Color:Story. Follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/lisatothsalinas/ and Twitter at https://twitter.com/smallestleaf. 

1. Jan Seale, "Straight Pin" 2. Katie Hoerth, "Poem in Which I Feel Ripped From My Mother's Arms" 3. Sandi Horton, "We Are Family" 4. Loretta Diane Walker, "Of Long and Longing" 5. Diane Glancy, "Everything You Must Do Be Bible" 6. Melissa Studdard, "Tithing - for Hildegard of Bingen" 7. Cassy Burleson, "A Poet Is Never Alone or Lonely, Even Somewhere Way Out Here or There" 8. Robin Davidson, "To Speak of Rivers" 9. Michael Owens, "Hospital Room" 10. Rosemary Catacalos, "La Casa" 11. Anne McCrady, "Lament" 12. Frances Treviño Santos, "She, the Owl" 13. Aaron Brown, "The Calling" 14. Charlotte Renk, "Rocking from the Irrawaddy to Walmart" 15. Octavio Quintanilla, "Gregor Samsa's Sister" 16. Aaron Brown, "I don't know anything about suffering" 17. Sheila Fiona Black, "Mercy" 18. Bruce Bond, "Host" 19. Bruce Bond, "Narcissus in the Underworld #29" 20. Loretta Diane Walker, "A Soldier's Postcard to the Future" 21. Diane Glancy, "Register of Departures" 22. Christine Boldt, "Venn Meditation" 23. Sasha West, "Husbands are Deadlier than Terrorists" 24. Budd Powell Mahan, "One Sky Above" 25. Terry Jude Miller, "How to Survive Radiation Treatments" 26. Courtney O'Banion Smith, "Up Early" 27. Christine Boldt, "Venn Meditation" 28. Jenna Pashley Smith, "The Night Garden" 29. Katie Hoerth, "How to Love in the Borderlands" 30. Valerie Martin Bailey, "A Reluctant Farewell" 31. Diane Glancy, "St. Bo-gast-ah Hears the Confession of the Deer" 32. Charlotte Renk, "Rocking from the Irrawaddy to Walmart" 33. Bruce Bond, “Narcissus in the Underworld #9” 34. Melissa Studdard, "Barefoot Rondelet" 35. Rosemary Catacalos, "Picture Postcard from a Painter" 36.  Susan Maxwell Campbell, "Toward a Light" 37. Loretta Diane Walker, "Snapdragon, Passion Flowers, and Cabbage" 38. Naomi Shihab Nye, "Farming" 39. Charlotte Renk, "Sting and Swell of Hive" 40. Budd Powell Mahan, "One Sky Above" 41. Barbara Blanks, "Trinity"

COVID-19 Fatality in 3 Phonemes

MOUMIN QUAZI

March 31, 2020

I see you.

I. C. U.

Icy you.

MOUMIN QUAZI is a professor at Tarleton State University. He recently was awarded the College English Association’s Professional Achievement Award. He hosts a radio show “The Beatles and Beyond,” co-directs Langdon Review Weekend, and edits two journals and a book series. He runs Scheherazade Press and is presently the treasurer of TACWT.

Beer Virus

RANDY T. PRUS

March 31, 2020

And what do we do

to make a virus true?

Do I blame myself

or you?

              This is a time

              to collect

              our connectiveness.

Our community

we, the people,

more local than

nationalistic,

               More than

               a nation

               of patriots.

As one, let us sing

heartfelt songs, let us

dance to the rhythms

that brought us here:

               The blues, rock,

               country borders,

               the gospel of heart,

               electronic, punk,

               indie by invention,

               indie by finding

the songs of slaves

inherent in our voice.

RANDY T. PRUS has lived in Durant, Oklahoma for twenty-nine years.  He is a professor and department chair at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, about 20 miles from the Texas border.  Randy’s recent book of poetry is On the Cusp of Memory (Mercury/Heartlink Press) with illustrations by his son, an artist, Ethan Prus.

Seamstress

LAURENCE MUSGROVE

April 1, 2020

If my mother were still alive,

She’d have joined the volunteer

Work of this mask-making army,

Throwing open her plastic bins

Of scraps, elastics, and ribbon.

She’d set up her machine, hand

Us her scissors, and tell us to

Start cutting until she said stop.

LAURENCE MUSGROVE is a writer, editor, and teacher. His books include Local Bird – a poetry collection, One Kind of Recording – a volume of aphorisms, and The Bluebonnet Sutras – Buddhist dialogues in verse. He received his PhD in English from University of Oregon, Eugene, and currently teaches at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. He offers workshops on the Buddhist wisdom tradition, drawing-to-learn, and the causes of beauty in poetry. He co-edited Texas Weather with Terry Dalrymple and is currently editing a volume of Writing Texas, the 7th annual conference proceedings of the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers. More here.

Self-Portrait of an INTJ reunited with inner-resilient-child in late March 2020

VANESSA COUTO JOHNSON

April 1, 2020

I am in touch with my inner only-child.

I loathe the bored, of how can they be, of how they lack their inner loaf.

I’d rather you admit to fear than say you’re bored: tainted complaint.

I am an asshole, like everyone is an opinion.

A self-suffice I refrigerate and I’d rather you not

increase your frequency of asking how I am

relative to our previous society. I bin how I’ve been.

I was lonelier two weeks ago, feeling like I was waiting for something

since daylight savings started the week. Having to out, having not finished

what I wanted, having to face and shave. Getting to stay in lets me ooze.

I am a three-personed odd: ingress, regress, aggress. 

Look, this is a confessional poem as well as a get-off-my-yawn poem—I’m not

interested in your first-world wants, your crowded while-aways 

now closed. I beg for your adaptation. What I enjoy 

about not having to get in front of you each day is that I don’t 

have to be as concerned with if you like me. Now, I can self-approve. 

I am accessing something I find nostalgic: my time.

Peace, room to trim my to-do list, I know I’m privileged (very!) to strategy

all I can for my students. 

I am the child-free sage on the mountain with wifi.

The one who gets to have her remote teaching zapped worldwide.

But I am also an everyone, like a pinholed onion

that does hope your ass is okay. Just let me hermit, though? 

because this layer is how I’ll thrive through this, with my inner-child’s 

mistimed, revived hand-washing passion, 

now to soap away viral leviathan.

VANESSA COUTO JOHNSON is the author of Pungent dins concentric, her first full-length book (Tolsun Books, 2018), and three chapbooks. Dialogist, Foundry, Softblow, Thrush, and other journals and anthologies have published her poetry. She teaches at Texas State University (since 2014), as well as Trinity University this academic year.

Like the Rest of Us

RENÉ SALDAÑA, JR.

April 1, 2020

At the big box store, the girl

behind the register asks

will I take back

my membership card, hold it

up for her to scan, which I do,

and even then she scans it

from a safe distance. I feel

like that one Black student 

who shared with the class

one morning just weeks before

the Towers came down:

he’d written a short piece

about paying an older White

woman with cash and when he

reached for his change back,

she cringed, dropped the coins

in his open palm. He took the money—

a quarter, some pennies, a dime, and

when he got outside the store

he threw it all into the bin and spat.

No, I really don’t feel anything close

to what my student had felt that day.

I’m not made to feel like spitting.

That woman hated him,

for centuries must’ve hated him.

With me, that girl doesn’t hate me,

she isn’t even afraid of me.

She is simply scared,

afraid like the rest of us. 

RENÉ SALDAÑA, JR. is an associate professor of Language, Diversity, and Literacy Studies in the College of Education of Texas Tech University. He is the author of several books for young adults and children, among them The Jumping Tree, A Good Long Way,
and Heartbeat of the Soul of the World. His poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in The English Journal, The Big Windows Review, and Inkwell Literary Review. 

Before the Wedding

MALLORY YOUNG

April 2, 2020

It’s not the first time we’ve been alone together

although we’ve never thought to question whether

this sense of solitude was shared.

We just assumed that loneliness was paired

with heartworn silences somehow.

The difference is that all the world is now

sharing our united isolation,

locked in common bonds of separation—

sequestered here in our connected rooms

like, just before the wedding, brides and grooms.

MALLORY YOUNG is an English professor at Tarleton State University. Though she presumes to write occasional poems, most of her recent publications focus on women’s literature and popular culture. She would like to stress that while she sympathizes with the persona of this poem, she is not herself the speaker.

#61

KEVIN CLAY

April 2, 2020

Will the dead carts roll by and by? I like to think I

do not fear death. It is true that it does not discriminate.

In its intense egalitarianism, it isn’t arbitrary. 

It is surely the most democratic of atrocities. The adored 

and adoring, the murderous prince of formaldehyde,

the torpid king, the lord of adipocere, the guardian 

always of silence. Put a little elbow grease on that, 

my father would say. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing

well. It is a new sort of solitude we have here. Imposed

by a fool and enforced by a demon. We fill the silence

with music, with our own loud voices. At times it seems

we are having a war. But in the end, that is no more than

the TV. And we are amused, while the butcher’s bill mounts. 

KEVIN CLAY lives in Arlington, Texas with his wife Beth. He has published in the Southern Humanities Review, the British journal Staple, and in many other periodicals. He has taught at a number of different universities and colleges, and is presently retired and teaching part-time at Mountain View College in Dallas.

Over Sixty

RODOLFO HERNANDEZ JR.

April 3, 2020

Today’s a new day 

But I’ll have to remind you,

Because you to tend to forget

When you’re over sixty. 

There is joy in your eyes

When someone comes to visit,

Because people come and go

When you’re over sixty. 

You raise the same arms

That raised me up too,

Because you to tend to want hugs

When you’re over sixty. 

I have to explain

Why I stay far away,

Because right now it’s good to

When you’re over sixty. 

You let it be known

That you’ve been insulted,

Because you should be respected

When you’re over sixty. 

And I know you’re upset

That things don’t make sense,

Because time isn’t on your side

When you’re over sixty. 

RODOLFO HERNANDEZ JR. is currently enrolled in the Mission Police Academy. He currently holds a Bachelor's degree from Middle Tennessee State University in Liberal Arts. He is also currently employed as a cashier with Chick-fil-A.

What Are You Reading?

BRIAN FEHLER

April 3, 2020

They sit before me

Not six feet away but six miles,

Sixty even — no not even, for

what are these panic-demic days?

I see them on a screen and they see me

and we all see each other: a sea

of square-inch faces, all of us

settled in places intimately familiar

to ourselves, startlingly glimpsed by all

those square-inch people spread out over the

now-forbidden world.

And I ask them: What are you reading, now 

that the world is — 

I pause, not long but long enough

for one of them — six miles, sixty away

to say: Now that the world has fallen apart?

And we laugh.

For what else is there to do, for all of us

pixel people to do, but laugh, as we sit

together-apart, trying to hold on?

BRIAN FEHLER is a sixth-generation Texan who teaches rhetoric and writing at Texas Woman's University. He holds a PhD from Texas Christian University.

What I Hope We Remember

CULLEN WHISENHUNT

April 5, 2020

In this new normal, where 

we’re living life through peepholes, 

peeking out from lonely bubbles 

built to keep each other safe,

It is still good to venture out, 

to take a walk or drive, remind 

ourselves the sun still shines, 

grass still greens, sky still blues.

That clouds still cling together 

like Jack’s mystic mountains, 

and his treetop dancers still twist 

and twirl lyrical, happy.  

That now is still the time for scissortails, 

sweeping in with the break of spring, 

coming to rest on rusted fence line 

and fanning famous tail feathers. 

That redbuds still bloom, while 

dogwood and pear tree petals 

paint parks and parking lots alike 

like shifting white-sand beaches.

And that road signs waist-deep in wildflowers 

can still be just as welcoming, 

and the wind can still wipe worry-sweat 

from a fear-fevered brow.  

CULLEN WHISENHUNT is a graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth Creative Writing MFA Program, and his work has been published in Dragon Poet Review, Red River Review, and the anthology Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush: The Poetry of Oklahoma, edited by Ron Wallace. 

From the grass the insects hummed

JESSICA NENO CLOUD

April 5, 2020

I was born on another watery planet 

When I first became a separate sliver 

Off of, out of the divine

A royal lineage

Deep beyond the

DNA of this world

When I was original

I swam among 

The thoughts of all my kin

And understood them as my own

This plane is confusing 

The souls here forget so fully 

And seem to care little about 

Preserving this watery world

I know this from that night

On the asphalt dancing alone 

And I asked the sky 

Why the people were forced apart

And from the grass the insects

Hummed 

And told me the answer

“So that they might come together”

And I swam among their thoughts and 

Knew them as my kin

“So that they might come together”

“They might come together”

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.

Panico

ANNA B. GONZALEZ

April 6, 2020

Mami walks in in a panic.

“Muchacha, cierra el garaje,

no te vayan a robar las cosas.”

She is afraid someone will steal my reserves.  

By that, I mean, the extra food in the fridge that sits in my garage along with the paper towels and toilet paper that I bought at the wholesale warehouse long before this all started. 

Later in the day Mami calls and says, “Muchacha, asegura cerrar bien las puertas y pon la alarma.”  

I shouldn’t have to THINK about locking doors or setting alarms.  

Mami’s even got me thinking about putting bars on the windows, I should have listened to Papi.

Mami walks in in a panic, 

again.

“Muchacha, el esposo de tu prima

tiene el virus.”

My head spins.

I sit, en silenció, pensando, orando.

¿Que ira hacer de nosotros? 

Dios mío, 

¿Podre proteger a mis hijas?

As day turns into night, cierro bien las ventanas, atrancó la puerta, y pongo la alarma.

And I listen to mis hijas 

As they turn in.

I close my eyes, just then 

Mi chiquita says, Mami, I love you, goodnight. 

Mi corazón late de felicidad.

That is all my soul needed to hear. 

ANNA B. GONZALEZ is an elementary school assistant principal for the Pharr San Juan Alamo Independent School District and a part-time lecturer for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas. She is currently a PhD. Candidate in Curriculum & Instruction at Texas Tech University specializing in Language, Diversity, and Literacy Studies.

FaceTimes

SUSAN SIGNE MORRISON

April 6, 2020

We were supposed to go to the Hull house. I would take an extra week off after my Texas university’s spring break to coincide with John’s own holiday from his college in Ohio. We’d meet near Boston at the home owned by my husband and his siblings. It lies twenty feet from the water. One day, they joke, it will be in the water. 

Ha. Ha.

Not.

Things, however, were starting to look dire. And not just for the Hull house—which some of the sibs were determined to sell before we’d all be sloshing around on the slate floor of the kitchen. 

“I don’t know, John,” I FaceTimed. “We might have to cancel. Or postpone until May after classes let out.”

John is a very even-tempered and chillaxed young man. Yet even he can get angry. About:

His sister thinking that the Adriatic was not part of the Mediterranean.

The innocuous 1941 film “Sun Valley Serenade” with Sonja Henie.

The sibs selling the Hull house.

But this story is not about the sibs selling the Hull house. Have I mentioned yet that some of the sibs intend to sell this sacred gathering place? Which has the most perfect view in the world—except perhaps for the friendly drug dealer in the parking lot. 

It is about our trip. Delayed. Postponed. Canceled.

Not yet, O Lord.

Rather, we still were at the point when it was possible.

Me: “Let’s check the weather in Hull.”

John: “49 and foggy.”

Me: “51 and light rain.”

The boy and I stare into each other’s eyes via the screen. What????

Me: “How can we have different weathers on our phones?”

John: “Maybe cuz you are on Central Time and I’m on Eastern so you are an hour behind?”

Me: “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

John: “Maybe we are in alternate worlds.”

Me: “We can’t be. We are talking live.”

John: “Are we?”

Me: “Maybe Hull is in two different worlds and we accessing them separately.”

John: “So that means….?”

Me: “I don’t know.”

John: “That we could travel to Hull in the world without the virus.”

Me, slowly: “Ok.”

John: “Couldn’t that work?”

Me: “How can we be sure to stay in that safe world?”

John: “By going there on my phone.”

Me: “Or is mine the safe one? And besides, we can’t get there by phone.”

John: “Let’s try.”

Stories are one attempt to shift into that alternate world. The nontoxic world. The one where all the sibs plan to keep the Hull house. The one where the weather corresponds. 

The one where John and I can meet.

Living in Austin, SUSAN SIGNE MORRISON writes on topics lurking in the margins of history, from WWII diaries to excrement in the Middle Ages. Professor of English at Texas State University, she is committed to making visible the lives of women hidden in the shades of history.

Nesting

ELIZABETH DAVIS JONES

April 7, 2020

Nature sounds the alarm.

Unprepared she responds,

frantically nesting

to provide for her young.

Is this place safe?

In creeps panic,

silently spreading 

to topple confidence.

Unknown enemies lurk!

Shuttered she waits,

faithfully protecting her young

to restore hope in the future.

ELIZABETH DAVIS JONES is a middle school reading specialist for the Prince William County Schools  in Northern Virginia. She is currently a PhD candidate in Curriculum & Instruction at Texas Tech University specializing in Language, Diversity, and Literacy Studies. 

Keep Going

JOANNA NELLIE NAVARRO

April 7, 2020

In my head it’s always chaos,

but these days have made it known

the brain

is 

going

and 

going…

I’m an avid sufferer of hypochondria,

but today…today it seems so much 

more.

There’s more truth in that voice telling me,

you might be next.

It’s the death toll rising,

the emptiness of the shelves.  

People believing invincibility

is causing a lot of uncertainty. 

Why isn’t anyone listening? 

Am I the only one who hears that voice?  

The continuous anxiety causing fires

through my head and stress that doesn’t

let me rest?

Is it too early to say

that maybe we will…

NEVERMIND.

I’ve forgotten

it does this to me,

the uncertainty of today.

JOANNA NELLIE NAVARRO is an 8th grade Special Education Teacher/ Dept Head for the Pharr San Juan Alamo Independent School District.  She holds a Master’s Degree from SNHU in Curriculum and Instruction, as well as her Principal Certification from Lamar University.  She lives in Pharr, TX with her husband and two dogs. 

Suspicion

BILL MCCLOUD

April 8, 2020

At this moment

what I hate most

about this shutdown is

on the rare occasions

that I go out I look

suspiciously at every

single person I meet

Do they have it?

Are they going

to give it to me?

And I hate that

It goes against all 

I’ve ever believed in

But I saw you

yesterday and it

made me suspicious

For close to a decade, BILL MCCLOUD served as the emcee for multi-day music festivals in Cherokee and Marble Falls, Texas. Though he lives in Oklahoma, the music frequently calls him back to Austin and Kerrville. Recent poems of his have appeared in Oklahoma Today and Oklahoma English Journal.