Age of Incurable Disease

Jeffrey L. Taylor

May 7, 2023

At three score and twelve
my osteoarthritis pain
can be treated. I can slow
its progress. There is no cure.
Same for sleep apnea.
My CPAP machine is palliative care,
not cure. Not all my knee pain
is arthritis. The worn out joint
can be replaced by shiny new,
which lasts half as long.
There are others coming,
over the horizon,
not yet visible. I know
neither their names, nor
their treatment. I feel
their heavy tread. When
the wind is right, I catch a whiff
I don’t recognize. In time,
I will.

Jeffrey L. Taylor's first submitted poems won 1st place and runner-up in Riff Magazine's 1994 Jazz and Blues Poetry Contest.  Encouraged, he continues to write and has been published in di-vêrsé-city, The Perch, Gathering Storm Magazine, Red River Review, Illya's Honey, Enchantment of the Ordinary anthology, Texas Poetry Calendar, and The Langdon Review.  Serving as sensei (instructor) to small children and professor to graduate students has taught him humility.

Stitches

Elisa A. Garza

January 1, 2023

Cancer interrupts your smoothly sewn seam 

with too much thread, a knotted mess 

that snares your movement, leaves you 

wondering how your children will go on. 

They do. Their quick-moving stitches 

leave you behind in a web of thread:

new friends you don’t meet, new places

you can’t visit, performances you can’t attend

because you are stuck in cancer’s knot.

You are stalled by chemotherapy,

asleep under the surgeon’s knife,

unmoving on the radiation table.

Your children learn independence sewn 

in ever-widening circles away from you,

away from your tired questions, 

the cancer, your attempts 

to discuss what it takes from you, 

the mother it takes from them. 

How can you prepare for the day 

your stitches reach the edge, 

prepare them for all the sewing after?

Elisa A. Garza, a native Houstonian, has published two chapbooks, Entre la Claridad (Mouthfeel Press, soon to appear in a second edition) and Familia (The Portlandia Group).  She has taught students from elementary through senior citizens in public schools, universities, and community programs.  Currently, she works as a freelance editor.

Gap Years

Vianna Posadas

December 18, 2022

At the age of four, 

you put bows in my hair. 

Our fourteen-year age gap 

may have been our greatest 

barrier, or perhaps your impulsive 

move before I turned five. 

I look at the commemorative photo 

of one of our few sisterly bonding 

moments. My hair in high pigtails, 

glittery lip gloss complementing  

blue butterfly barrettes tailored 

to showcase my Dora-style bangs.  

The photo snapped days before  

your departure would be our last 

for nearly a decade. Our next  

photo will showcase me towering  

over you before your twenty-sixth  

birthday; the next before your thirty-sixth.  

This tearful reunion is complete  

with a promise to never again wait  

decades between each visit. 

So many years lost, with two 

stubborn parents influencing 

my young mind. Now that we 

are grown, I understand both 

sides of the narrative. I cannot 

dwell on “what-ifs,” but I can 

try to make up for lost time. 

You now call me for makeup  

advice, discussing the latest deals 

at Sephora and Ulta, forwarding 

coupons that enable my addiction. 

It seems like you were just playfully  

slapping Mary Kay blush on my cheeks. 

We now discuss the best foundation 

that will not settle into our fine lines. 

At twenty-one, I now drop 

the “half” in your title: sister. 

Vianna Posadas is a graduate student at Lamar University. She is a certified teacher who substitutes and resides in Nederland, TX.

The Chairs

Reilly Smith

December 11, 2022

Like him, Paw-Paw’s chair was an institution,

a navy blue lazy boy—his dutiful second wife.

When he reclined, the springs nagged and the base shrieked. 

That chair didn't die; it retired just after him.

His next chair was handed down from Grammy’s younger sister;

it held his 3X butt with ease and absorbed the too-loud TV.

That chair ate two hearing aids and eight batteries. 

After his hip replacement, the family invested in the last hurrah: 

a hospital-grade throne, remote included.

What with renal failure, he ruined that chair. 

Sometimes, when you shift it just right, you can smell 

the ammonia-scented humiliation of a man's last stand.

Reilly Smith is a novice poet, a mother, and a graduate student of English at Lamar University.

Palimpsests

Betsy Joseph

November 27, 2022

At this stage of life

we are palimpsests—

alterations made on our original selves,

not unlike old manuscripts with erasures

allowing another’s writing to occupy the space

while still leaving traces of the first author’s thoughts.

We stop to glance into mirrors now—

not to admire our reflection

but to search for traces of recognition

in that face which appeared in early photos,

comparing the faded expression

with the face that returns our gaze.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has had poems appear in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.

The Last Act of Love

Chris Ellery

November 19, 2022

for Tom Camfield

Young lovers bathe their bodies in the sea

and play. “What fun! What fun!” they say,  

“If only summer would last forever! 

“If only, if only it could always be summer!”

Remembering a summer fling of long ago, 

I see this well-tanned wished-for world, 

world of a single solstice, 

world without reaping or sowing; 

world without hillsides bursting into bright mosaics, 

without frosty dawns, marching bands, pumpkins,

no geese honking odes above the big-moon fields, 

no handholding walks in new wine weather; 

world without hearth fires, wassail and caroling, 

without snowfall, snowmen, snow angel visitations, 

no indolent winter nights of dreaming, two by two

entwined, cocooned in downy comfort; 

world with no ice melt, snow melt, no spring runoff 

swelling wild rivers, no robin’s eggs, no hatchlings, 

no tilling and planting, no plum blossoms, 

bluebonnets, dogwood, dewberry, cherry, peach.

Before you call the genie, think. 

Think, my children, before you wish. 

Life is a cycle of unpredictable weather,

a play of more than one brief act. 

The sun, so welcome to your bodies now, 

does not rise to burn your skin 

or the green lawn of your dream house 

on the set of one dusty season 

while autumn change keeps waiting in the wings

for Scorpius to end its endless soliloquy. 

It’s true, the first act of love, when lovers meet, 

is sweet, sweet. But what if the comedy 

ended there, stuck 

in the scene before your happily ever after?

If summer and your summer affair were destined 

to last forever, then whatever grows 

in this season of light and furious heat 

can never know the harvest.

Chris Ellery is a frequent contributor and ardent reader of TPA. His two most recent poetry collections are Elder Tree and Canticles of the Body.

These Days Begin Early

Milton Jordan

November 8, 2022

Jumps and jerks pulsing from my left knee

shake me wide awake even earlier

than my daily two hours too soon

and my right bears far too much to reach

the borrowed walker standing against the wall,

much closer, it seemed, the night before.

Sitting now at bed’s edge and yearning 

for a more proximate urinal

I convince myself to stand and stumble

cautiously forward, reach the hand grips

and navigate the necessary steps

with only moderate discomfort.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. His most recent poetry collection is A Forest for the Trees from Backroom Window Press, 2022.

texas ages

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

November 9, 2022

more than a few know the names 

big bend   nasa  the gulf coast  

even the wild horse desert 

big bend  the fort knox for cacti 

some that will age like glaciers move 

nasa housing moon rocks of ages 

under present day plexi glass  

the gulf coast  the sandy remains 

of primeval oceans 

wild horse desert 

silent under the ageless july sun 

there are more names 

small names   like 

 the one where the whopping cranes winter 

tall and lanky  

how well they have aged at this refuge 

yet how few know of the humans 

the first peoples 

who came  

building this land 

with their ancient fires 

and stories 

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. 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.

Approaching Demise

Suzanne Morris

November 6, 2022

No one could

say for sure

how long the tree 

has been standing.

Long enough, perhaps, to have

felt the ground shake when

trains went rumbling down

the tracks nearby

on what is now an empty roadbed

alongside a Texas byway,

where wild crimson clover

spreads like a fever every spring

and along which youthful punks

speed by in pickup trucks,

tossing out aluminum cans

and styrofoam cups

that two people older than

they imagine ever being will

bend down and collect

for the morning trash.

Given its height and breadth,

the tree likely dates at least

from around World War II,

making it as old as we are.

It stands apart in the field now,

as if shunned by the 

sweet gums and pines

and other, younger, oaks

clustered not far away.

This was not always so,

however, judging by how

crooked and stunted are

some of its branches.

Truth to tell, the tree is

not very pretty,

not the one we’d choose for

having our ashes scattered

in its shade,

with boughs so twisted

it looks as if it

started to turn and run,

but changed its mind.

Besides, it may not be

alive for much longer.

We notice more and more 

blackening branches, and

its leaves, a pale and sickly green,

are becoming sparse as the hair

on an old man’s head.

Still, there is a kind of

stateliness about the tree

on an autumn afternoon when

the sun slants through

those aging branches.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet.  Following eight published works of fiction, her poems have appeared in several anthologies, and in poetry journals including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, Arts Alive San Antonio, Stone Poetry, and Creatopia Magazine.  She lives in Cherokee County with her husband and their part-hound dog Asher.

To Live in One Skin for All of Your Days

Vincent Hostak

November 5, 2022

To live in one skin for all of your days,

to show its folds daily, shake off the crust, 

unlike the pine snake rising up from a crag or 

in the shape of black water pouring down from a bluff,

is knowing, that while you will never be the snake, 

the cheat to right living is

not to name the condition “Loneliness”

if you live in one skin for all of your days. 

To live in one skin for all of your days 

is to drink time-worn water hidden in caves, 

giving scant drops back to the air and the wells,

watching earth wear its age by changing it daily,

doing years of its work in one weekend spasm: 

shores, bays called back to the sea, its

wake taking shingles, cars, and lives into the tide

should you live in one skin for all of your days.

To live in one skin for all of your days 

is to build your life from morasses and bogs,

steal from minnows making do with remains 

then chant out the rivers named in your sweat and your blood:

Passaic, Chickamauga, Platte, Calumet and 

the rust-bellied Chicago, 

waters with purpose from before you were made

if you live in one skin for all of your days.

To live in one skin for all of your days 

is to give these all back to the channels and seas 

without wreckage of cyclones, but sighs of relief, 

to sing out the dryness if you can’t leave a coil,  

call Mojave, Sonora, Chihuahua, Black Rock, 

blessings on these, take what is left,

fill the snake’s path, the gullies, a shelf of rainclouds

if you live in one skin for all of your days.

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.

Exogyra texana

E. D. Watson

November 4, 2022

Little mollusks, ghosts in the stone, 

little coiled ones, you and your kind 

once ruled this land; now I hold what’s left 

of your kingdom: some shells in matrix. 

Sixty-five million years ago, my backyard 

was a shallow sea; before words were sounds, 

you excreted and inhabited them. 

The brine was keener then, the world wet 

and quiet as an embryo. Who could have guessed 

the asteroid would come and the dinosaurs 

would go? Who could have known they’d take you 

with them: you, who’d lived so long, 

and well? But you say, It has happened before; 

it will happen again. I don’t want to believe you

but you are proof of what you warn, surfaced

beside the driveway after a hard rain: old sea floor, 

chunk of the Cretaceous, scrawled with a message 

in calligraphic loops of Exogyra, prophecy 

in a long dead language.

E. D. Watson is a poet, yoga instructor, and library clerk in San Marcos, Texas. Her work has been published by Ms., Rattle, Narrative, and others. When she's not writing, she teaches mindful movement and poetry for wellness, and helps to produce When the River Speaks, a community poetry and art zine published out of the San Marcos Public Library.

Late Night Theatrics

Walter Bargen

November 3, 2022

After five days in the hospital recovering from a tick bite

and nearly succumbing to ehrlichiosis, I nearly fall off

the edge of the world again my first night home. I feed

raccoons to keep them out of trouble, the cheap

dog food feast scattered in the pasture.

I trip maybe because I’m wearing ill-fitting inappropriate footwear

in a late summer drought. Knee-high rubber boots sprayed

with insecticide, hoping that will protect me from tick bites.

Or maybe my balance is a little off having laid in a hospital bed

for five days. Mindless, watching mindless TV.

Or maybe I’ve lost something after so many decades,

but at 74 my body remembers a lesson from fifty-years-ago

on gym mats. I do not break my fall, no hands out waiting,

risking wrists and fingers. I abruptly lean forward   

with the momentum landing on my right shoulder and roll.

I am left standing, nothing broken, no worse for slamming

into drought-hard earth, surprised that muscle memory

saved me from another visit to the hospital.

I did scare the raccoons who were closely watching a crazy

human perform tricks for them but that didn’t stop their eating.

Walter Bargen has published 25 books of poetry including My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), and You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).

Forget It

Donna Freeman

November 2, 2022

I say cacophony,

Yet character is what I mean.

The letters don’t matter in my head

tumbling out with extra or error

or even instead.

You say, “Forget about it.”

What do you know?

I, Pandora’s box, filled with pictures,

faded pastels of a vivid past,

a locked clock without a key

will never last past today,

will never be a memory.

Still, I travel down the drain.

Was that what I called my brain?

No, no aspirin, no Aricept can fix it.

No pill will take it away.

“I understand,” you say.

But who are you anyway?

Did I meet you before?

Was it at the doctor’s office

or at that big department store?

Tell me, whoever you are,

will you speak for me

when the tongue lies still,

the voice long gone,

and words just seem like empty sound.

Nothing more.

Donna Freeman started writing poetry at age twelve. Her poetry appears in Wilderness House Literary Review, Blue Lake Review, and Ocean State Poets Anthology: Giving Voice. Donna's poems were selected for RI Public's Radio "Virtual Gallery" as well as ekphrastic shows at Imago and Wickford Art Galleries. 

Rewriting the Story

Milton Jordan

November 1, 2022

When half our students threatened uprising

after Me Too and Black Lives Matter

the department chair finally appointed

me to rewrite the years old syllabus

for our introductory state history course.

Me, retired five years and covering classes

for faculty slots unfilled due to budget

shortfall and limited donor response.

I had, admittedly, complained for years:

This course reads like a praise poem for rugged

white men from Missouri who conquered

the wilderness as well as the local folk

who’d long made this wild country their home.

Some topics on slaves and their descendants

and a brief assignment on women

are as inadequate as endnote suggestions

recommending readings on families 

named Nunez or Hinojosa.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. His most recent poetry collection is A Forest for the Trees from Backroom Window Press, 2022.