The Basilica of the Little Flower

Jacob Friesenhahn

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

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Basilica of the Little Flower, San Antonio, Texas

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I have stood a century against the expanse of sky,

clear and blue as the faith that forged me.

I hear fire station sirens,

prayers that never reach

the heavens.

The sun still loves this place.

His rays gild my tiles, soft fire by midday.

Gas stations hum in neon tongues,

pawn shops and bail bonds whisper

together, deals for anyone

who has already lost.

My dome gleams, a beacon,

before gold fades to amber by evening.

Taco trucks incense the air

with the sticky scent of survival.

Tire shops grind out tough songs

of asphalt.

Beneath me, she rots.

Her stones exhausted,

their faces discolored.

A McDonald’s buzzes beneath,

golden arches mimicking eternity.

Signs of decay spread like doubt.

Her walls have begun to crumble,

echoes of prayers mumbled within.

I feel the weight shifting,

the quiet betrayal.

How long do domes of faith

defy time’s growing gravity?

I still hold my crucifix high,

though my arm aches.

For those who look up

for something to believe,

I stand till the last stone breaks.

Jacob Friesenhahn teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. He serves as Program Head for Theology and Spiritual Action and as Lead Faculty for Philosophy. His first book of poems is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

Jesus on High

Alan Berecka

November 3, 2024

        All Saints Episcopal Church, Corpus Christi

I’ve always tried to keep

the pious at arm’s length,

those who went out of their way

to throw wet blankets on the joys of life.

And yet I’m often confronted

by these priggish folks

who voice their concern

for my salvation as they reveal

the one and only true alcohol-free path.

I have often tried to point out 

Jesus was a vintner of the finest wine

ever tasted in Cana. I am told

by my zealot friends that I err

in my reading of The Good Book

because it’s obvious Jesus

brewed and drank grape juice.

There has never seemed to be

an end to this argument, until

the other day as I walked the labyrinth

at All Saints Episcopal Church,

and I happened to look up

at a 10-foot stained glass Jesus

who hovered on the ceiling

above my path, illumined

from behind by several bright

bulbs, and started to laugh

because finally I knew 

without a doubt, Jesus was lit.

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.

A Lesson on Symbol

Chris Ellery

October 6, 2024

I ask my students to think of a place

that represents who they are, 

their inner self, totality of ego or psyche—

memories, beliefs, values, dreams. 

I give them time. 

Reflection and writing.

The alphas are the first to volunteer

to answer, athletes mostly, for whom 

the self’s container is a stadium or an arena, 

all strategy and striving, scoring and winning. 

Two students describe their rooms at home.

One is black walls, pizza boxes, tossed clothes, 

Nintendo neon and heavy metal chaos. 

One is pink and soft, “arranged the way I want it.”

One student is a mall, one a Walmart, 

others a pawnshop, a thrift shop, a junkyard, 

a landfill—insatiable consumption 

and detritus of consumption. 

Another is her family’s cabin in the Rockies. 

Another is a concert hall and stage. 

A hospital stands for the future nurse,

trauma and pain and her careful hope of healing. 

Someone says she is a weathered barn

on her grandfather’s ranch, hay and horses, 

the stalls freshly mucked—or maybe

she is the ranch itself, bounded by barbed wire.

One claims the brain of a Faustus, Frankenstein, 

or Jekyll, his inner life a laboratory—

Bunsen burners, boiling beakers, coiling wires, 

caged mice, caged monkeys, cadavers.

One jokester says he is a castle in Transylvania. 

Another is a prison (his cellmate is Clyde Barrow). 

And yet another an asylum: “Straightjackets 

and padded cells, but the mind is free!” 

It seems time to sum up, make the point, 

move on to the next bullet in my lesson plan. 

But there sits Madeline, the quiet one, 

whose silence, for once, seems to wish to speak. 

“Madeline, would you like to share?”

“I see my Self as a cathedral. 

Not walls of stone and mortar,

saints and gargoyles, stained glass and statues. 

But a few green acres 

in the hollow of a sacred mountain, 

sanctuary of light and shadow,

home to wild things, 

every inch an altar,

stream with shallows of living water

and a clear, deep pool frozen in winter,

monolith boulders placed eons ago by glaciers,

lush underbrush below the vaulting canopy, 

shrubs, vines, roots and rot, ferns and fairy fire,

towering trees to carry the eyes 

to sun and sky, moon and stars. 

The heart of a rainforest, 

primally breathing the clerestory air, 

endlessly changing, hours and seasons, 

dying, renewing, dying, renewing,

the bloom and ripeness of Eden before Eden.”

Not one of us says a word when Madeline pauses.

One deep breath. Then another. 

Then she seems to feel 

the need to punctuate the silence.

“That’s a picture of the Self, my imaginal Self.

It also stands for the soul of earth, 

the Cosmos.”

Serene, beatific. 

Her pale face glowing

like the polished marble of a statue of a goddess. 

The classroom (my own best symbol of my psyche) 

has fallen into silence, awe and adoration, 

has fallen onto unspoiled ground, the stillness 

of unbroken being, unwavering center of realization. 

Chris Ellery, now retired, taught literature and creative writing at Angelo State University for 31 years. He is a member of the Texas Association of Creative Writers, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Fulbright Alumni Association. A frequent contributor to and an avid supporter of Texas Poetry Assignments, his most recent collection of poems--One Like Silence (Resource Collections, 2024)--includes nine poems originally published on the TPA website. 

Anything Helps: January 2027

Darby Riley

September 29, 2024

Walking back from the red courthouse,

I duck in the centuries-old 

stone cathedral to meditate.

I sit, spine straight, eyes closed, breathing.

A cell phone rings.  I hear “hello.”

The voice trails off.  At last, silence.

My mind drifts to our new leader:

confidence man, fear purveyor,

greedy Earth-killing clown of hate.

Then a poor man behind me says:

“Hey sir, would you have five dollars?”

Selecting bills, I say, “Here’s four.”

A shy lady walks up and asks:

“Can you help me get a cold drink?”

I grouse and give her two dollars.

Prayer time over, I rouse myself

and head to work, to organize.

Lord, help us to rescue ourselves.

Darby Riley, a native San Antonian, has been married to Chris Riley since 1971 and they have three grown children and a granddaughter, age 6. He has hosted a monthly poetry writing workshop for over 25 years. He practices law with his son Charles and is active in the local Sierra Club.

Cathedral

Kathryn Jones

September 22, 2024

Gothic arches, columns, soaring spaces –

I feel tiny beneath flying buttresses 

while I light a candle for my mother 

who never visited Notre Dame except in photos.

Her face lit up when I said I would see it

for her. I pray for her healing and mine, 

even though I know it’s likely too late, but 

hope is the soul’s flame, flickering in the dark. 

Fire almost destroyed the cathedral but

I hear the sounds of rebuilding. They comfort me, 

more than prayer or meditation, that time marches 

onward, taking us with it, willing or not.

The cathedral’s new spire scrapes the sky, 

pointing to heaven, but my mother lies in a bed

in South Texas next to an altar of remembrance 

where my tiny candle burns.

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.

In the Memory of Hagia Sophia

Sumera Saleem

September 15, 2024

We are wandering through the city of mosques, Istanbul,

And we follow the way to Hagia Sophia as eagerly as we usually ignore history.

We stand in wonder under the dome, blessing us like the hand of God,

And the mosaics cradle centuries of power.

In them, you may see the rise and fall of the cross and the crescent.

This sacred space has turned like seasons,

From church to mosque and mosque to church.

What has continued to reign across thousands of years

Is the prayer of the faithful, whose face does not belong to the East or the West.

Sumera Saleem is currently pursuing her PhD in environmental humanities at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. To her, reading poetry is as important as breathing. Her poems have appeared in Tejascovido, Langdon Review published by Tarleton State University, USA, Blue Minaret, Lit Sphere, Surrey Library UK, The Text Journal, The Ghazal Page, Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters, and Word Magazine. A few more are forthcoming in international and national anthologies.

In Place of Steeples

Milton Jordan

September 15, 2024

Daddy drove U.S. 75 north 

some mid-June Mondays taking Mother and us

to Grandmother’s house, Grandaddy’s too,

when that two-lane highway wound through Texas 

small towns, widening beyond Corsicana 

where we began searching from the rear seat

for sight of a neon-red winged horse,

Mother often first asking, D’you see it?

Magnolia Oil built their sky high headquarters

rising above surrounding rooflines 

and set their familiar logo higher still

on a replica derrick, Pegasus 

welcoming us and others traveling evenings  

for their own reasons to downtown Dallas.

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

In a Time of Trains and Terminals

Milton Jordan

September 8, 2024

Our brother still in Europe and ration stamps

still precious, we traveled the web of rails 

linking the Bayou City to nearby 

and distant destinations, waiting with crowds  

on church pew seating under high vaulted 

ceilings to hear our train called and walk down

a short ramp to the wide hallway running 

beneath the tracks to numbered stairways 

bringing us and our fellow travelers

back up into the hot iron odor 

of coal fired locomotives belching steam.

Mother held tightly to Sarah’s hand

while I, reluctant, carried the canvas bag 

she had packed with our sandwich supper

knowing we’d ignore the chimed calls to dinner,

aware how many brought sack suppers from home. 

That great cathedral station disappeared,

repurposed for a ballpark’s narthex,

the church pews and chalkboard timetables,

ticket windows and four-faced hanging clock

displayed now in a small side room museum

featuring artifacts from trains and terminals. 

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

Mission Tejas State Park

Thomas Hemminger

September 8, 2024

We camped close to the Camino Real

with ghosts of centuries past 

echoing their tales 

through the halls of pine, oak, cottonwood.

We felt the stories of the first nations

whirl around our campsite,

and the air was heavy 

with the sacred heritage they told. 

We read the history of churches

that planted themselves along 

a highway now all but lost

to the annals of natural history. 

We celebrated with the songs

of nature floating through the vaulted canopy

of bowers overhead, venerated by native birds,

in our cathedral of earth and wood. 

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, 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.