Nature Is a Serial Killer

Kathryn Jones

September 22, 2024

Autumn, when the purple mistflower and orange cosmos

take over the garden, standing a foot or more tall,

sweet sustenance for the annual migration.

The nectar calls first the Queens, then the Monarchs.

I walk among the flowers and the butterflies flutter

around me until I feel like I’m in a dream.

I put the Monarchs in my viewfinder, zooming in

on their wings with patterns like stained glass

attached to black-and-white spotted bodies.

Their long proboscis probes the flowers. I focus on

a large Monarch as it begins moving down the stem

of a cosmos. I frame the shot, release the shutter.

Then I see it, a green praying mantis hidden in the leaves,

holding the Monarch with its barbed forelegs,

pulling off the wings and nibbling the soft flesh.

The Monarchs return to the fringed flowers all autumn,

oblivious to what lies below. I hold my camera, waiting

for the moment of capture as the mantises wait for theirs.

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.

August Evenings

Chip Dameron

September 15, 2024

cicadas

tune their songs

for mating and death

Chip Dameron’s latest book, Relatively Speaking, is a shared collection with Betsy Joseph. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he’s also been a Dobie Paisano fellow.

State of the Season

Betsy Joseph

September 15, 2024

Mid-August in Texas

exhibits all the fanfare of prime insect season:

cicadas in chorus are at the peak of summer recitals,

circles of mosquitos dive madly in dizzying heat,

gentle honey bees hum ecstatically

in their forays around our corner fountain.

To each her own.

I take outdoor pleasure from this season

in early mornings and later evenings

when dawn is cresting and the moon is first appearing

and most insects are hidden and silent.

We are all accorded our times of preference

in the cycle of time.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in several 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 Cockroach

Jean Hackett

September 8, 2024

You would stomp us down, stamp us out,

Watch as the red ones, the blacks, 

Americanskis and Germans

scurry into cracks and crevices,

through steam pipes and sewers,

across the synaptic snarls 

of your monkey brains.

Though we don’t drink your blood,

we strip clean the desiccated flesh 

of your soiled, sordid remains.

Though we do not sow, 

we reap the bounty of all 

your civilizations scramble to create.

We are life without beauty, pure survival,

a pathogenic threat to your belief 

in nature’s preordained, noble purposes.

We are the archetype of your disgust,

unsavory, unsanitary, monstrous vermin,

eternally destined to remain hidden 

in the tattered edges 

of your collective consciousness.

We have been with you always,

erratically embroidered by ancient Egyptians

onto spells woven to expel us forever

and cursed by Pliny.

But we shall never be banished,

not by poisoned words nor nuclear radiation.

We shall endure 

forever.

Jean Hackett lives and writes in San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country. Her most recent work has appeared in journals Ocotillo Review, Windward Review, and Voices de la Luna, anthologies Poured Out from the Big Dipper, Purifying Wind, and Yellow Flag. Jean’s chapbook Masked/Unmuted was published in March, 2022.

good samaritan

d. ellis phelps

September 8, 2024

she couldn’t bear

to see him suffer

after he hit her head-on

she hadn’t seen him coming:

in a flash he smashed

against the glass

his exoskeleton

his transparent wings

his check-mark legs

—still wriggling      pinned 

          under the windshield 

wiper

      ~

she tried to fling him free

with a swipe and a swish

but no      he wouldn’t

he couldn’t         let go

& so      she slowed

pulled to the side

of the road

carefully lifting the wiper’s blade

she came to the helpless 

grasshopper’s aid

gingerly pried him from the glass

to toss him into the roadside grass

but then:

a flick of his prickly legs

      she shrieked

      she freaked

& she jumped back

      ~

she did not see the coming truck

the driver swerved

she had good luck

but for the inches that saved her life

she might have died

for love      

of a bug

d. ellis phelps’ work has appeared widely online and in print. She is the author of four poetry collections and one novel and the editor of Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press (MSSP) and of the digital journal fws:  international journal of literature & art where she publishes the work of others.

Where the Cicadas Sang

Thomas Hemminger

August 25, 2024

I found you in a San Antonio sunset,

watching boats on the river.

The bougainvillea made you a vision,

as if Jose Arpa captured you there. 

I sipped to the late sounds of summer

as I dared myself to speak to you. 

Then, you saw me, too. 

We stayed there for eternity, 

while heavy sounds slipped away. 

We fell in love,

and a golden twilight seemed to approve. 

There we began our lifetime together, 

on a Texas river where the cicadas sang. 

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.

Wing Stroke

Vincent Hostak

August 25, 2024

Under broomsedge stalks, 

the few shadows cast on the wide savannah, 

where squirrels struggle to find them, 

field crickets resume their rehearsals.

A wing stroke, a nudge 

of tiny files worn from a season’s chirping, 

bow hairs grazing threadbare strings 

coax barely a whisper at daybreak.

Into reddening night 

the long songs linger, the conjuration of 

a partner their lone souls’ work

measure after determined measure.

Sound and echoes make

a rare harmony of song and its return,

living only a few seconds, yet

even at rest still singing to us.

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.

texas royalty

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

August 25, 2024

just now

when i went out to the mailbox

i stopped to check the bottlebrush shrubs for bees

and there

in all its singular glory

a monarch

texas’ closest thing to royalty

flirting in the august heat

the red bristles are worn and small

yet

you still looked for a ration

hidden and sweet

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.  

Wished I’d Had a Big Red

Irene Keller

August 25, 2024

My fingers wanted to touch earth

     Maturing tree roots needed to breathe

thickly packed mulch              I  disarrayed

  harmful black plastic           ripped away

  with contented sigh roots stretched                         

      I pleased, smiled, “You’re welcome”

tranquility ceased  fast, unexpected               

red spots—welts—rash skin infected? 

The morning gave time to dig under the sun

      But noon announced, “You provide a feast”  

bites  ravaged my pale flesh       

 hours upon hours             body—fiery RED

not like measles blotchy surprise  

no graduation glory             from sixth grade

nor like a red arm from baseball

proud to show all toughness to pain

Memories of red encounters amusing

      Yet did not appease the need to cool 

those endless 

red-hot  chigger fires

Irene Keller, Ph.D., amateur poet, is a retired Texas educator who enjoys working in her backyard, that is until Texas bugs have their way with her.

Texas Bugs

Jim LaVilla-Havelin

August 18, 2024

I.

everything’s bigger in…

                        light years from 

                            itsy-bitsy 

                        the magnificent

                        banana spider

                        ensconced in his

    radiating

                           rigging

is 

                       in fact

                       big enough  

                       to warrant 

                       conversation

          and I do

                       ask if he knows

          Charlotte

                       compliment him 

                       on his architecture

II.

Luna Moth camouflaged

                        in the bark of the tree 

                        unrecognizable

until

one wing lifts off

                        slightly, then the next

                        folding the air and

                        flying away

big enough for Richard Dadd

            to climb on board

and visit 

III.

do fire ants 

have high hopes

or are they content

to sting and blister us?

the visiting girl at summer camp

                                   come to Texas from Minnesota

                                   miserable already in the heat

            stepped in a mound

Not giving it a number of its own — 

      to say nothing of scorpions…

Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent, Tales from the Breakaway Republic, a chapbook, was published by Moonstone Press, Philadelphia, in May 2022. LaVilla-Havelin is the Coordinator for National Poetry Month in San Antonio.

Trailside

Milton Jordan

August 11, 2024

Butterflies colorful as helicopter

parrots hover over the meadow

above scattered lantana and verbena,

blue-eyed grass, a scatter of paintbrush

and green pads about to show cactus roses. 

Four guys and a gal on our Grounds and Trails 

committee credit milkweed planted

across the clearing they created

around three trees beyond the back trail

and named Backyard Butterfly Garden.  

Old-timers, though, are not convinced. We knew 

the grandmothers of these flutterers

years ago when nothing grew back here

but cactus, overgrown thistle

and Johnson grass dried out by mid-May. 

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.