Oh Great, Another Crusade

Alan Berecka

December 15, 2024

Christian Crusades never end well—

one ceased when Constantinople fell

but not before sparking a cataclysm 

between the three sons of Abraham

that oceans of blood have failed to quell.

And talk about too little too late,

before he died, Billy Graham (the Golden Gate 

Bridge between the pulpit and politics)

confessed he should have just nixed

any conjoining of church with state.

Soon an army of good books, by law, will invade 

our classrooms to save our young, but I’m afraid

all hell will let loose as soon as neighbors

who are true believers in different flavors 

of saviors decide whose bible makes the grade.

Alan Berecka resides with his wife Alice and an ornery rescue dog named Ophelia in Sinton, Texas  He retired in January from being a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and is settling into a whole new level of contentment. His poetry has appeared in such places as the American Literary Review, Texas Review, and The San Antonio Express. He has authored three chapbooks, and six full collections, the latest of which is Atlas Sighs from Turning Plow Press, 2024. A Living is not a Life: A Working Title (Black Spruce Press, Brooklyn, 2021) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. From 2017 to 2019 he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi

The Last Bastion

Alan Berecka

December 1, 2024

I listened to some talking heads

on satellite radio as I drove 

through the middle of nowhere, 

somewhere on a rural Texas highway

not far from Luling. Naysayers 

and nihilists opined on our fractured

nation, lamented the grand chasm 

that divides red from blue; even the host,

a normally glass-half-full kind of guy,

said he was losing faith in the adversaries’

ability to sit down and break bread together.

When a road sign cautioned

an intersection and stop sign

up ahead, I braked and waited

my turn at the four-way stop.

As the radio rambled on,

a hybrid Prius set off to the west,

then a pickup hauling hay

rumbled south, then a semi

began to grind through gears

from its starting place and headed

north, then I took my turn

moving on to the east, as a late model

sedan blowing smoke waited its turn, 

and I was warmed by a rising sun,

and thought I heard Hope faintly 

whisper, “All is not lost, yet.”

Alan Berecka resides with his wife Alice and an ornery rescue dog named Ophelia in Sinton, Texas  He retired in January from being a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, and is settling into a whole new level of contentment. His poetry has appeared in such places as American Literary Review, Texas Review, and The San Antonio Express. He has authored three chapbooks, and six full collections, the latest of which is Atlas Sighs from Turning Plow Press, 2024. A Living is not a Life: A Working Title (Black Spruce Press, Brooklyn, 2021) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. From 2017-2019 he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.

celebrating diá de los muertos: brownsville, texas

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

October 27, 2024

their legacy ours

dance beats hot in our blood 

food for our children

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015 entitled she: robed and wordless. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020.

Good News

Thomas Hemminger

October 27, 2024

The best news of the day

did not come from Washington. 

It didn’t come from a newscast, 

a newspaper, or even a newsroom. 

The best news of the day

came from a nearby holding pen,

where a poor heifer was helped

to deliver her firstborn. 

In order to save both lives

the cattleman wrapped chains

around the calf’s front legs

and pulled.

That newborn hit the dirt, 

was baptized with a bucket of water, 

and took its first breaths

in a free world. 

The heifer forgot the hard labor

and rose up to clean her baby. 

“Hmmm,” I thought. 

“Now, that’s some good news.” 

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His work has been published locally in Dallas, as well as in The Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Poetry Catalog. His personal hero is Mr. Fred Rogers, the creator of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was through America’s favorite “neighbor” that Thomas learned of the importance of loving others, and of giving them their own space and grace to grow

Small Targets

Vincent Hostak

October 6, 2024

U.S. Officials Believe Israel Will Not Conduct Full Invasion of Lebanon, New York Times, September 30, 2024

“After a weekend of intense talks, the American officials said they believed that Israel was planning only smaller, targeted incursions in southern Lebanon.”

Late last night 

a river of thirty thousand birds  

coasted across the Texas skies. 

I saw a single Chimney Swift pause above the eaves. 

Correlation is not causation, yet, 

I’ll dim my porchlight before sunset, I suppose. 

In Beiruit,

families seek the safety of a flock

in frugal light from the waning moon

and sleep on blankets near the steps of the Martyr’s Square.

They have doused the lights in homes to the south 

which otherwise glow like small targets in the night.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.

This Was Not in the News

Chris Ellery

October 6, 2024

Some Israelis were murdered

and some were taken.

Gaza was half destroyed.

Politicians justified the deaths.

Assassinations and recriminations.

Some pagers blew up in Beirut

and then some walkie-talkies.

Netanyahu scolded the UN.

The Ayatollah launched a thousand

missiles, and Bebe shot them down.

This was all in the news.

A second-grade boy named Jack

dressed as a goose for his class play.

His mother made his costume—

white felt feathers, orange felt beak

and feet. He had one line to say

but would not say it on the phone

to his abuela, who could not be there.

This was not in the news.

Abuela picked out a spot

in the columbarium and spent a good

part of the day with her priest

planning the order of service.

She has already forgotten the gospel

they chose and the hymns, but not

her spot in the columbarium,

a sunny spot near the bronze

St. Francis of Assisi.

She has never been to Assisi,

and she will never go.

What comes to her mind

when she thinks of Assisi

is El Greco’s “View of Toledo,”

with a smoky castle, all but invisible,

high above the town in the stormy clouds.

Francis lived there as a boy,

and a blood-sniffing giant lives there now

hiding golden urns in his pantry.

Abuela knows she must wait there,

locked in the pantry, locked

in the dark with so many others.

She has already begun to wait.

This will not be in the news.

She is waiting for the funeral mass,

waiting for the solemn processional,

acolytes and crucifer, waiting

for the cow-bought beans to grow,

waiting for her brave little Jack

with goose feathers under

his friar’s robe. He will climb

through iron clouds to the castle,  

outwit the bone-grinding ogre,

take every last golden egg.

Chris Ellery is the author of The Big Mosque of Mercy, a collection of poems based on his extensive travels in the Middle East, including Israel. His most recent book is One Like Silence. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fulbright Alumni Association, and the Peace Ambassadors of West Texas.

Waiting for Someone to Come

Suzanne Morris

September 22, 2024

I keep thinking of the

mop of blond hair above

the thin shoulders of the

fourteen-year-old boy 

being arraigned in the

Georgia courtroom

the unruly blond hair

concealing his profile

as he responds politely

to the Judge

making me think of

an angel in a Christmas pageant

you know, the one who

doesn’t fit in with the others

keeping vigil over the

manger scene,

his halo tilting slightly off-center

the tragedy of the boy’s

home life

spilling over to

destroy four innocent lives and

irreparably damage many more

the assault weapon a gift from

the misguided father

trying to create a bond

with his flailing son.

Several days later, I am

reading a magazine story

of the last two Shakers– 

Brother Arnold and Sister June– 

aging peacefully alongside their

outer family, neighbors and friends

at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village

in Maine, while keeping the faith that

Someone is coming; the work

will go on

as Shakers have believed since

their beginning in 1774.

I find myself superimposing

the image of the

boy with the mop of

blond hair

upon the utopian picture

of the Shaker community

as if somehow,

before it was too late,

his pleas for help had

been heard all the way to

Sabbathday Lake

where he arrived,

still innocent,

to enter into this

community of love and grace

to learn to plane wood

and grow a garden,

to hay the field and

tend the sheep;

to share with others

in the joyful harvest

at the bounteous

noonday meal

and so to be taught that

he was part of something

larger than himself, that

his life was precious,

his labors

a vehicle for the divine,

that all along

he had been

someone

the Shakers were

waiting for.

–After Keeping the Faith, by Jordan Kisner

New York Times Magazine, 9/8/2024

Photographs by Lucas Foglia

A native of Houston, Suzanne Morris has made her home in East Texas for nearly two decades.  Her poems have appeared in anthologies as well as online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pine Cone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. 

Welcome to Dystopia

Kathryn Jones

September 22, 2024

Utopia lives  

in a town surrounded by a paradise

of hills along the Sabinal River. 

Utopia tried to live 

in a French-Belgian-Swiss colony,

La Réunion, along the Trinity; 

in Post at the foot of the Panhandle

where a cereal king envisioned 

a model town, an agrarian paradise

until it wouldn’t rain anymore and 

the railroad wouldn’t stop at utopia.

Dystopia lives

in the Texas hills, along rivers,

in the east and the west.  

Ancient Greek for “bad place,” 

this dystopia is not imagined, 

like Huxley’s Brave New World. 

Look at the evidence:

wild places ruined by greed;

climate change, pollution;

technology controlled by monster corporations;

the specter of AI; government oppression

imposing fear, dehumanizing lives. 

Dystopia lives 

along the border in wretched camps,

families still searching for their separated children;

in the trickery of those who want to banish

refugees seeking asylum, putting them on planes

from Texas to Cape Cod and Chicago;

in the Texas Capitol, where the corrupt are not held accountable,

the poor punished for being poor and powerless;

in the slums of cities, homeless ignored on dirty streets;

in the minds of people who believe what they want to hear,

ignoring evidence, denying truth.

It is neither a brave nor a new world

but the cowardly same old story, 

the folly of history repeating itself

while a dead child floats in the Rio Grande

because he believed in a paradise across the river, 

a state called Texas that meant “friends,”

a place that was supposed to give him a better life.

Kathryn Jones is a poet, journalist, and essayist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, and the Texas Observer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including TexasPoetryAssignment.com, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose (Dos Gatos Press, 2023), Lone Star Poetry (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2023), and in her chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life, published by Finishing Line Press. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016 and lives on a ranch near Glen Rose, Texas.