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PAUL JUHASZ

March 19, 2020

He’s there every morning.

Silhouetted in the sun’s vanguard,

hackey-sacking in the parking lot corner,

as I drive by on the way to work.

He’s there every morning.

Manicured beard,

the sheen of the morning’s nascent rays off his shaved head,

the lithe grace of his athleticism keeping the small leather bag constantly in play.

Master of such an improbable game.

He’s there every morning.

As we watch Italy collapse.

As bodies are taken from a Kirkland nursing home.

As schools, restaurants, all public venues close,

As we wrestle with our new realities,

Self-quarantine, social distance, shelter-in-place.

He’s there every morning.

Focused, steady, peaceful.

Alone in the corner of the parking lot,

Passing the bean-filled sack from foot to foot,

Never letting it hit the ground.

Sharing his grace until we can re-collect our own.

He’s there every morning.

As much a part of the morning’s benediction 

as the purple-orange glints of sunrise,

or the warbling song of birds.

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.

Pacing

CHAD KNESEK

March 19, 2020

Walk to the living room.

I miss my students.

Walk to the kitchen.

Have they eaten today?

Walk to the window.

Are they safe?

Stare at the empty streets.

Are they scared?

Walk to the bedroom.

Do they know how much I miss them?

Walk to the kitchen.

Do they know how much I love them?

Never ending news cycle.

Every channel.

Grocery store chaos.

Do people have what they need?

Restaurants closed.

How will they survive this?

Market closes down.

Does this spell ruin for so many?

Walk to the living room.

I miss my students.

“Alexa, tell me some good news!”

She sighs, “You’re worried about others instead of yourself.”

CHAD KNESEK is an elementary music teacher in Houston, Texas. He is currently working towards his PhD. in Curriculum & Instruction at Texas Tech University specializing in Language, Diversity, and Literacy. 

Buzzards Buzzards Everywhere

CRAIG KINNEY

March 19, 2020

Maitre d’s of the dead,

black stars in blue infinity, 

swallows of Santa Rita,

returning annually 

to snack on death,

to remind us of mortality,

to roost in the trees

next to our house.

I’d shoo them away

but the way they droop

their red prune heads,

between hunched shoulders,

while bouncing on branches,

it’s endearing. Even darkness

has its beauty. Why would I

shoo away beauty?

CRAIG KINNEY is, by trade, an architect living in San Angelo, Texas with his wife Susan.  He is trying to wash his hands frequently.

Distances

TERRY DALRYMPLE

March 20, 2020

Keeping the Distance

Social Distance

TERRY DALRYMPLE writes fiction and teaches literature and writing at Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX. He enjoys photography and gardening, both of which provide excellent therapy during these times of social distancing and isolation.

Corona-Sonnet

ALBERT HALEY

March 20, 2020

So they told us to close up restaurants and bars, shut doors

to our own homes. We’d already locked up tomb-like

classrooms, left the D-1 arena at maximum capacity for echoes.

At the grocery store I find out not enough hens can sit 

to keep up with egg demand. Not quite the end of the world

and, bright side, perhaps all this elides into an introvert’s dream?

Don’t stand too close to me, grant me lots of domestic time

to putter, then I’ll plop in a chair and read, read, read—

But after a while I lower my prolix novel. I miss the students

of all things. My sloppy clothes guys, the serious girls,

almost all of whom (unlike boys) bring their textbook to class.

I even long for that tepid drinking fountain that used to be

only wiped down on Fridays. It makes me want to go 

to my front door, burst it open, belt out Italian songs in the street. 

An extra line denied me. But screw the form. Mamma mia, si salterà!

ALBERT HALEY is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize. He has had poems appear in The Texas Review, The Texas Observer, Borderlands as well as journals outside the region. He serves writer in residence and Professor of English at Abilene Christian University.

Where to Go Among the Chaos

karla k. morton

March 20, 2020

I cannot explain to you

what God is,

that is his job,

if you care to listen,

or how he is in that thin shaft

of sunlight

coming down through the window,

But here is his porch,

among the trestled clematis

and the Ponderosa pine;

and here is his doorbell

of joy.

I’ll leave you now,

to walk in.

2010 Texas Poet Laureate karla k. morton is taking advantage of the current isolation and is embedded into the New Mexican mesas working on her forthcoming poetry book written to help culturally preserve and protect our national parks (TCU Press, Fall 2020).

This Time

BILL MCCLOUD

March 20, 2020

My cat has died

during this time of virus

This viral time of viral virus

When continuing death and 

loss continues to take place

in this new time of death and 

loss And my cat died today

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.

Hands Meditation

LAURENCE MUSGROVE

March 21, 2020

If you are following the advice

Set on repeat like a heartbeat,

Look also to see how your hands

Are not only your hands but how

They are your mother’s hands

With her ring on the windowsill

As the soap coats her veined skin

And her fingernails shine under

The kitchen faucet and she turns

To see you walking into breakfast

And they are your father’s hands

Washing his after the garage where

He changed the oil and looks to

See where he can dry his hands

And your mother laughs and hands

Him a towel from the drawer she

Opens with her young hands with

The ring back in place where he

Slipped it when they joined hands

And made you who now holds both

Your mother’s and father’s hands

As you wash and go blind because

You are standing and washing and

Crying the tears they cried over you.

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.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

PAUL JUHASZ

March 23, 2020

Perhaps I was too concerned about getting in another ride or two before the end of the day,

Perhaps I was worried that with everything ordered closed, everyone ordered home, I won’t make enough for the rent, for the car payment,

Perhaps I was too frustrated by how few people seem to be taking this seriously, getting their nails done, shopping the outlets, playing basketball,

Perhaps I was distracted by “how bad this could get” fears,

But it wasn’t until later that night that I realized she did not ask me to join her for a cup of coffee; she asked me five times, each time more insistent, each “are you sure?” more plaintive. It wasn’t until later that night that I recognized the disappointment lacing her parting, “Thank you for the ride.”

Perhaps the coffee was simply gratuity. 

Perhaps “coffee” just meant coffee. 

Perhaps we’re too laden with the weight of fatality rates and infection curves to remember to cultivate connection.

Perhaps we overlook the myriad glories, the possibilities wrapped within every “perhaps.”

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.

Castaway at Midnight

KATHRYN JONES

March 23, 2020

Is anybody out there?

I typed into the blue glow,

hurling my message in a bottle 

into dark water.

Yes, I’m here, someone answered.

Where are you?

I don’t know.

I’m here, too, wrote another.

How are you?

I don’t know, but I’m glad you’re there. 

Letters on the screen blink 

like lights on the horizon,

boats searching for a harbor

and landing on my island. 

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. 

Bliss on a Bicycle

JESSICA NENO CLOUD

March 24, 2020

There’s a road near my house

With a U-shaped elevation

And you can coast up and down 

On two wheels at high speed

We circle around the church lot

And salute from 10 feet away 

The hospital workers

Taking a break with a walk

The garish red trumpet lilies 

Are at the top of the hill

And the breeze is blowing 

Wisteria petals in my face

Then I start coasting down

My feet off the pedals 

All limbs outstretched 

Balancing in this bliss

The wind whips in my ears 

And gets so loud

I can’t even hear

The music in my pocket

I replace my feet 

And raise one hand carefully

Relishing the air zooming

Past my skin

I turn around and do it again

Like a child again and again

So happy to be here, outside

And alive and healthy

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.

Social Distance

JERRY BRADLEY

March 24, 2020

Turtle-wise commissioners are demanding

that we stay inside and seal our houses

as we watch the markets tumble. Easy enough:

there is no place now to spend money

and no way to make it.

So we electronically tip our hats

and drink to each other’s health

until there’s nothing left in the glass.

And when there’s no one left to write to,

we’ll keep pouring until

there’s nothing left in the bottle.

Who are we kidding? We know in truth

how this turns out. What we’re saving for is one

of those expensive funeral parlor haircuts.

Outside the bluebonnets are already rioting.

JERRY BRADLEY, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is University Professor of English and the Leland Best Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Lamar University. He is the author of 8 books and has published in New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, Poetry Magazine, and Southern Humanities Review. He lives in Beaumont, Texas.

Nature is My Sanctuary

KATHRYN JONES

March 24, 2020

I kneel at the altar of beauty and truth

worship within walls

made of infinite grains of sand

baptized by the stream 

hanging gardens of fern clinging to rock ledges

the turquoise sky lit like a glass dome

inner sanctum presided over not by angels

but by cicadas singing a universal hymn

glorifying creation with no religion 

measuring eternity with the churning

of the sun, moon, and stars

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. 

Supermarket Visions of Hell

JEAN HACKETT

March 25, 2020

Grim go the shoppers to the grocery store,

small apartment people locked down in big towns

who broke out in bawdy song

balanced on balconies the night before.

Today they cue Soviet style in bread lines,

clustering, twisting themselves like mutant RNA

around the block to wait patiently (or not)

for whatever is in store.

Apples, peaches, pears, and plums, 

limit 1 bag per customer per trip.

No more blueberry muffins,

the bakery department shut down yesterday.

3 raspberry parfaits and a double Dutch chocolate cake

sit like abandoned puppies in a lone open cooler,

await adoption.

JEAN HACKETT lives and writes in the San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country.  Her work has been most recently published in Voices de la Luna, The San Antonio Express News, and The Houston Chronicle.  One of her poems has been selected to appear on San Antonio’s VIA buses during National Poetry Month.

Will We Desire Touch?

LORETTA DIANE WALKER

March 25, 2020

After the COVID-19 kryptonite

is discovered, will we desire touch—

that primitive longing

swaddled in our lives before birth?

Will it be more desirable 

than clasping light between our teeth

in a world darkening with dread?

Before this phantom smuggled

panic into our lives, 

beliefs broke friendships,

family relationships,

kind words became crushed bricks, 

crumbled from the weight 

of anger’s battering.

Curious how this fear forces wide

       the circle of distance,

how the invisible separates us.

And those souls who depend on a stranger’s touch

for comfort: a brush of fingertips from the grocery clerk,

a bump from the waitress burdened with too many trays,

a pat on the back from the worker at a soup kitchen,

the volunteer who rocks an orphaned child

in the neonatal intensive-care unit.   Is there a surrogate for the warm arch of flesh?

Oh! To fill air and lungs, lives and loneliness

with the dust of crushed kind words.

Let their film cover computer, 

telephone, television screens.

Let their residue stick to hands flush against glass 

as they reach for companionship from the pit of isolation.

And for those whose hands cannot reach

beyond cardboard boxes, may they hear 

friendly voices echoing from heart-to-heart

in this dark season of distancing.

LORETTA DIANE WALKER, a musician who plays her tenor saxophone sometimes, a teacher who still likes her students, and an artist who has been humbled and inspired by a collection of remarkable people and poets, is learning to navigate digital teaching. She has stockpiled jigsaw puzzles to calm her anxiety.

Disappeared

JULIE CHAPPELL

March 26, 2020

I must have been about 3 or 4 when,

one day, I stepped silently between

a china cabinet and another tall piece

and disappeared, uncharacteristically quiet

as I waited and watched my parents, first,

call my name, then, still calling, move 

frantically downstairs, upstairs, outside,

searching for their lost child, while I, calculated

the precise moment to appear, out of thin air

to be embraced, cherished, loved at last.

That memory came unbidden to me a few

days ago while I sat staring, not mindless,

but unfocused, waiting, watching life as usual

outside my window, the movement of Nature

as it unveils this year’s Spring colors and critters,

all the forest striving in fraught, anxious beats,

while I wait and watch in fraught, anxious beats,

disappeared, testing not the limits of love

but of human arrogance and Nature’s revenge.

JULIE CHAPPELL is recently retired from Tarleton State University in Texas as Professor of early British literature and creative writing. She has read her creative works widely, including venues in California, New Mexico, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Her poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Malpaïs Review; Voices de la Luna; Concho River Review; Stone Renga; and Speak Your Mind. Her latest poetry collection, Mad Habits of a Life, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in early 2019.

My First Zoom Meeting in the Coronavirus World

HANK JONES

March 26, 2020

First off, I’m in sweat pants, slippers, t-shirt, flannel overshirt, sitting in a lazyboy covered by three cats. The cats are C-O-M-F-O-R-T-A-B-L-E, and have been for the length of the show that just finished minutes before the scheduled meeting I’ve all but forgotten about. I ask my wife to bring me my laptop, hoping there’s enough battery charge to get me through this. 

I hurriedly find the Zoom link, go through the process of signing in. Thank God it asks if I want the video on. I say, no. Thank God a friend told me you could participate without the video. So I do. I also choose to mute the audio. I sign in as Hank. Others sign in by last name, title, initials. I realize the Zoom handle you choose says something about you. I don’t know what exactly. 

My colleagues, also mostly new to this new Zoom world, sign in with video and audio. This will be a problem over the next hour as they blow noses, cough, take drinks from large cups, get bothered by children, look at their phones, lean in and lean out, all in bad lighting with no makeup. We all look terrible. We all look sick. We all look like we rolled out of bed to be at this meeting. I mean, they do. No one can see me. Or hear me. Thank God. 

The meeting progresses. It’s not actually a meeting. That’s tomorrow. Today is a presentation by a guy who ostensibly wants to chair our department. This is a position that no one in my department actually wants. Which is why this guy from Illinois is talking to us today. He’s a Shakespearean. He’s young and hip. He has a clever PowerPoint, and like that woman with the legs in the ZZ Top song, he knows how to use it. 

So I watch for an hour and more. I’m enjoying it. My wife, who used to work in this department, sees a colleague or two and makes sarcastic, rude remarks about them. Despite the audio mute, I am terrified they can hear. I shush her. She grins mischievously. But it’s clear no one heard a thing. I get more comfortable with my silent witness. I clear my throat. I talk to Julie. I pass a little gas, quietly at first, but after a while, I’m just ripping them. My wife looks at me like I’m insane. I get the giggles. I’m now laughing uncontrollably while this poor candidate keeps talking. I haven’t heard a word he’s said for five minutes. I try to straighten up and listen. 

I notice Meg, who had long hair before Spring Break, now has a bob-cut. I can’t resist. I text her about her new doo. I see the little rectangle of her picture look at her phone. She writes back: stuck at home with kids, the hair had to go. I see Moumin in another rectangle. I notice a giant stuffed tiger on a shelf above his head. I write him quickly and warn him not to move suddenly or the tiger might pounce. I see him glance at his phone and laugh. He writes back, LMFAO.

Wait, what am I supposed to be doing? Oh, right, new guy, Shakespeare, might be my boss someday. I try to concentrate. I realize watching this meeting in this chair while covered in cats would make an amazing shot. I reverse my camera and take several trial shots till I get just the right angle. I send the best one to Marissa. She writes back, CATS!

I try to re-focus. I eventually do. I hear most of his presentation. It’s really good. I like this guy. And I’m a little ashamed of myself. I didn’t realize I was EXACTLY LIKE MY STUDENTS!

Realize, though not with much surprise, that this new online world from which we will endeavor to teach our students is a fraught one. We’re lucky, though. Most of the semester is under our belts. We just need to survive for another month and a couple of weeks. Then blessed summer, and I’m not teaching any classes this summer. 

I’ve got it relatively easy. At least for now. But for how long? As I log off, I make a promise to cut my students all kinds of slack. Cut myself some slack, too. We’ll be lucky to get through this semester. We’ll be lucky to get through this at all.

HANK JONES lives in Oklahoma, teaches in Texas, and has listened to a lot of audiobooks. He recently had poems in the anthology Speak Your Mind: Poems of Protest and Resistance as part of the 2019 Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma.

Virus

AVERY MANN

March 27, 2020

I have the virus

Building my barriers

Hoarding my supplies

Rebalancing my portfolio

Identifying the enemy

Cursing the isolation

Calculating the odds

Zooming my work

Streaming my distractions

Mourning my losses

I may even get sick

AVERY MANN, in his 26th year in international education, writes from Germany.

While Quarantined, I Make a Pot of Beans

KATHERINE HOERTH

March 27, 2020

Today, I hunger for normality,

so I pull my stockpot from the cupboard.

It wears the years upon its surface, scratches

and dents from countless moves, the tumbles

it took, the ashy aftermath of flame.

The pintos chatter as I pour them in.

I inspect them for the errant pebble

amongst the speckles. Then, I fill the pot

with water from the tap and let them soak

in the refrigerator overnight.

This task requires boundless patience,

a commodity in short supply

like toilet paper, bleach, and baby wipes.

When morning comes (just like it always does),

I drain the pot of yesterday and fill

it up again with water, then I wait

for it to start to boil on the stove.

Pinches of oregano and garlic

go into the pot. The scents of earth,

memories and comfort rise with bubbles,

fill the kitchen with a warm embrace.

As I chop cilantro, I taste spring

blooming deep within my roiling belly

as it blooms outside, oblivious

of the virus or our quarantines.

As I slice the onion into slivers, 

I think of how we all come from the earth,

and how, no matter what, we will return.

As I dice a jalapeno pepper, 

I think of how we all have seeds of power

tucked within the membranes of ourselves.

I dump them in the steaming soup of succor.

They simmer for a couple hours more

before I add a rubescent tomato. 

Our mothers and our grandmothers all knew

a pot of beans could fill the emptiness

of countless bowls, of bellies, and of hearts.

So they cooked them in their tidy kitchens

as their worlds, too, were threatening to end.

KATHERINE HOERTH is an assistant professor of English at Lamar University and editor-in-chief of Lamar University Literary Press. In 2015, she won the Helen C. Smith Prize for the best book of poetry in Texas for Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots. Her work has been published in journals such as Valparaiso Review, Summerset Review, and Southwestern American Literature. In 2020, her fourth poetry collection, Borderland Mujeres, will be released by SFAU Press. The book is a bilingual collection of poetry and art created with poet Julieta Corpus and artist Corinne McCormack Whittemore. Katherine is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and lives in Beaumont.

Most Days

ANNA B. GONZALEZ

March 27, 2020

The sun shines

like every other day.

Yet it is quiet,

quieter than most days.

Inside

children are laughing,

keyboards are clacking,

dogs are barking.

As night falls,

The darkness is revealing.

Inside

children are worried,

parents are scared,

dogs are comforting.

The streets are empty,

emptier than most days.

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.