First Week of Fall

Elisa A. Garza

February 2, 2025

I hear conversation, then see 

the squirrel, now quiet 

and still, atop the fence boards.

Cardinal’s melodious answer

sends my eyes to a pink tangle

of crepe myrtle blossoms,

bird hidden in sun’s glare.

Squirrel rasps in reply,

voice a loud quacking.

The heat has not waned.

Maybe that is what they discuss,

or the abundance of deep red

magnolia seeds bejeweling the grass,

pears softening, pecans pushing off

their outer pods. Cardinal trills,

I walk on, praising the day.

Elisa A. Garza is a poet, editor, and former writing and literature teacher.  Her full-length collection, Regalos (Lamar University Literary Press), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.  Her chapbooks include Between the Light / entre la claridad and out in 2025 The Body, Cancerous (both from Mouthfeel Press).

The Horned Toad: Phrynosoma cornatum

Janelle Curlin-Taylor

February 2, 2025

Is there a critter more Texan? Looking remarkably like a

Very small Triceratops or a very large armored diatom

They stand their ground, spitting blood to the delight of small children.

As a child, I discovered if I got down on the ground and was very still

The Horned Toad would stop spitting, cock its angular little head and

We could talk for hours in the language of children and critters.

This discovery lead me beneath the neighborhood church (not my own)

Built up on concrete blocks. Wanting to take my new friend home,

And after successfully coaxing her into a shoe box, I became stuck.

Crying out for help, a neighbor heard my cries and alerted my mother.

I don’t remember how I was freed from this earnest enterprise.

I do remember my mother’s patience.

The flys we collected to feed my friend, (who prefers to eat ants)

And the gentle coaxing that, after a time, we should set my friend free.

Phrynosoma cornatum – most Texas of critters. Little but mighty.

What were we thinking as we gazed into each other’s eyes?

Janelle Curlin-Taylor, a Texas poet living in Tennessee, inherited the poetry gene from her grandfather and her mother. Published in various Texas journals and anthologies, she is grateful to Texas Poetry Assignment for keeping Texas and poetry close.  She is married to California poet Jeffrey Taylor.

Retirement Morning

Robert Wynne

November 17, 2024

The wet nose of my alarm clock

snuffles itself into my ear

and I swivel clockwise on my rump

to slide quietly free of heavy covers.

I take Charlie outside to pee.

The sun itself isn’t even awake yet

but we sit for a good minute, her

sniffing the air while I marvel

at suburban stars, a phenomenon

dwindling as sunrise nears.

The shape of an otherwise white egret

swoops black across the waning moon

and we head back inside. I provide

the customary treats and snuggle

back into bed next to my sleeping wife

who doesn’t get to hear canine jaws

chomping on the remnants of night

as the coming dawn promises light

and little else in the way of guarantees.

Robert Wynne earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University.  A former co-editor of Cider Press Review, he has published 6 chapbooks, and 3 full-length books of poetry, the most recent being “Self-Portrait as Odysseus,” published in 2011 by Tebot Bach Press.  He’s won numerous prizes, and his poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies throughout North America.  Recently retired, he lives in Burleson, TX with his wife and their German Shepherd, Charlie. His online home is www.rwynne.com.

Armadillo

Gary S. Rosin

October 6, 2024

Sitting in a blind,
beside a field of stubble,
the wheat, harvested,

but grain, left on the ground,
enough to draw the deer,

waiting for a buck
to melt out of the trees,
waiting in the cold

December afternoon,
breath, fogging my glasses.

Suddenly, a stir,
a shuffle in the leaves,
behind the blind—

an armadillo, searching,
sniffing for an early snack.

The noise echoed
ever louder in my ears,
as it made its way,

slowly approaching, slowly
moving to just behind,

but not moving on,
caught by the scent of something,
clawing, here and there,

until I could not stand it,
and slapped the side of the blind.

The armadillo
startled—suddenly, it sprang
three feet, straight up,

and seemed to hang in the air,
a foot away from my face.

Long snout. Tiny eyes.
Huge ears. Bands of armor. Hairs,
stiffly poking through.

Segments of tail. Long, long claws,
scrabbling, slashing at the air.

Until, at last,
it dropped into the grass,
then scurried away.

And I was left, gaping,
still seeing armadillo,

claws, slashing near my face.

Gary S. Rosin’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion Cold Moon Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Texas Poetry Assignment, The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Virtual, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web, and Fire and Shadows.

Le Voyeur

Ulia Trylowsky

October 6, 2024

I lay in bed

naked,

trying to ignore him

as he turned his head slowly

to look at me

staring,

leering,

his quivering

antennae erect.

Avoir le cafard.*

*translation – feeling blue (literal translation - having the cockroach)

Uliana Trylowsky is a transplanted Ukrainian-Canadian who has lived in Southeast Texas for over 25 years.  While she struggled to accustom herself to the unique qualities of the region, she now calls it home and, until the war in Ukraine, found herself to be quite a happy person.

Post Card From Home

Mark Jodon

September 29, 2024

His backyard attracted a variety of varmints:

gray squirrels, raccoons, possums, an occasional armadillo.

It was not until some of these creatures established residency 

in his attic that he felt compelled to take action.

From the local feed store, he purchased a 14-gauge 

wire trap with an easy transfer eviction door.

He placed the trap, set with dollops of crunchy peanut butter,

along the weathered fence behind the azaleas.

Only the squirrels took the bait.  He drove his captive guests 

to Memorial Park, a few miles away and released them.

His children suspected they somehow found their way back.

One morning, he checked the trap.  Inside he found 

a postcard: Although we enjoy visiting the park, 

next time may we go to the zoo?

Mark Jodon is the author of Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books 2024).  He is an Iconoclast Artist committed to bringing poetry into the public schools in Houston and Galveston.

oh what a merry dance there lives

d. ellis phelps

September 22, 2024

i love the way the sunflower leaves

its seeds still reaching for the sky

a few yellow blooms bob & sway 

in the summer breeze

—feed queen butterflies and honey bees

there is so much more in this demise

than can be seen with human eyes

with leaves now brown

one might think to yank

this lanky plant down

to wrest this unsightly lean

from over the green st. augustine

but now      the finch and wren have come

—tiny acrobats with wings

each seed pod a trapeze 

from which they swing

oh what a merry dance there lives

amidst this seeming demise

where ladybugs bees & butterflies feed

where in the spring     every dropping seed

—becomes the sun

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.

Howl

Jeffrey L. Taylor

September 22, 2024

Wolves understand
howl in the presence
of the moon.
Dogs remember this.

L’heure entre chien et loup
The hour between dog and wolf

Where in this darkness
is healing?

Jeffrey L. Taylor is a retired Software Engineer.  Around 1990 poems started holding his sleep hostage.  He has been published in The Perch, California  Quarterly, Texas Poetry Calendar, and Texas Poetry Assignment.

Commute

Chris Ellery 

September 22, 2024

So far on the way, I’ve counted eight 

dead deer, four armadillos, and a javelina, 

fresh kills all, not even bloated. Up ahead 

vultures peck and pluck a messy smear 

that might have been a fox or feral dog.

One day, just here, a young owl flew out 

of the bar ditch like a clay pigeon—PULL! 

BAM!—and shattered my windshield. 

Late one night the biggest buck I ever saw

totaled my truck and damn near killed me. 

I reckon I’ve slaughtered, on my long commute, 

an ark of creatures, present and future. 

Skunks, possums, rabbits, coons, bobcats, 

turtles, toads, birds, bats. Bugs beyond number, 

the nocturnal blitz of kamikaze protoplasm.

No wonder that so many eyes stare out 

of the night from the dark shoulder of my dreams. 

Eyes, nothing but eyes, disembodied, all colors,

shapes, and sizes, peering out on the country road 

where I travel alone, taking my chances.

Chris Ellery is the author of six poetry collections, most recently One Like Silence, which includes nine of his TPA poems. A nature poet and peace activist, Ellery lives in San Angelo, never tiring of the teeming life along the Red Arroyo.

In Velvet

Kathryn Jones

September 22, 2024

He is in velvet now, blood vessels,

skin, hairs forming a soft membrane

to strengthen antlers, six points now,

to attract mates, show dominance.

He comes here alone but I knew him

when he still had spots as did his twin sister,

staying close to the doe with her full teats,

feeding on corn we scattered, ever watchful.

Now his sister with her own twins chases him away;

he lets her, later returns to nibble what they left,

raises his head every few seconds, ever vigilant,

tilts his crown backlit by the afternoon sun,

then melts back into the oak forest,

hooves rustling leaves, going back into

the velvet evening.

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.

Family Bristle

Jim LaVilla-Havelin  

September 15, 2024

through a hole in the fence they came

a hole their snouts had pried wide,

and bumped their bulk through it

ever-widening, came

the family of wild boars

crashing they were, at least through  the fence

the mama, the papa, and many small boars, too

and uncles and cousins, all bristle and snout

all snuffled about 

middle of the night, awakened by the sound

of swish rustle in fallen leaves – saw shadowy

shapes in the security light –  went from my bed

to the back porch

to find twenty or thirty 

boars gawking squint-eyed 

facing me, like an audience at a family entertainment

until I rattled and yelled and racketed them into a panic

and they fled – back into the meadow

and back to the fence, and back through the hole

they had made in the fence –

the mamas and papas and babies and cousins,

the aunts and the uncles and some stray boars

seeking the solace of family, and finding, in fleeing,

bristles catching on fencing, the littlest boars needing

butting their butts, to make it tumbling out and away.

and if doctor seuss isn’t hovering here, in this story of boars

and the backyard at night, and Lupe and I mending fence in

the morning, then I don’t know who  else it is that

gallops, galumphs, and bristles, like that

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.

Chupacabra Eats Barbequed Cabrito

Clarence Wolfshohl

September 15, 2024

He thinks of the goat

out at the roadhouse bar 

that drinks beer for the laughs

of the other two-legged drinkers of beer.

The owner of bar and goat

fixes a big pot of frijoles, barbeques

over a mesquite fire, and starts

the goat off by setting a longneck

on the ground so the goat can lip 

it up and chugalug all twelve ounces

at once.  Then the patrons keep

buying it beer all night long.

The goat bleats—a sound

Chupacabra loves to hear,

music to his ears above Willie

and the Flatlanders on the jukebox.

He’d prefer the goat uncooked,

steaming blood dribbling down

and clotting in his chin hairs,

but cabrito is fine and Chupacabra

is nothing if not obliging.

Native of San Antonio, Clarence Wolfshohl has been active in the small press as a writer and publisher for sixty years.  More recently, he has published in Southwest American Literature, The Mailer Review, New Texas, New Letters, and Texas Poetry Assignment.

A Certain Triangle of Light

Betsy Joseph

September 15, 2024

           for Bella

Our gray feline lies attuned 

to the fading stream of the day

to a certain triangle of light,

so wishing it will hover and stay

so that she can stretch and nap

while leaving her humans to say

something meaningful about the Solstice,

the declinations of afternoon rays,

their voices mere whispers as deepening day

runs bare of warmth and breath,

with Helios in his chariot flitting madly away.

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.

On the Window’s Ledge

Milton Jordan

September 15, 2024

That April barn swallows swooped beyond

our broad double window and you noticed

patterns peculiar to certain birds.

This spring, their numbers somewhat reduced,

the patterns of their flight more random

or you are investing less attention,

your interest focused on the fledgling

sitting, beak open expectantly,

outside our smaller bedroom window.  

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

Evocation

Vincent Hostak

September 15, 2024

 for Sylvia Plath

I mistook him for a man:

the coyote leaning on a trash bin

I carelessly took to the street without its lid

not knowing what I’d evoke.

Others encircled a rabbit on a distant lawn.

It was as if he strutted away from the game,

spine upright, stately on two legs.

I watched his hands probe and lance,

saw a surgeon above an open chest

emerging with a tender melon in his clutches.

Then on all fours he was coyote again

his whiskers heavy with the pale fruit’s blood,

his clumsy mouth casting seeds everywhere.

Before peeling away in a flash of headlights

he left a trail of melon skin 

like a fairy circle now greying in the sun.

I step around them on my walk, unsure

even in the safety of bright noon sunlight.

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.

In the Near Presence of Coyotes

Jean Hackett

September 15, 2024

Operatic harmonies

shudder though quaking brush,

pitch themselves high

in red cedar branches,

sending sound waves

of field mice and cottontails

scurrying from cacophony’s 

feral center.

Ancient fear 

buttresses my body,

sends my mind bounding 

with the deer 

I imagine the pack brought down

in a hunt now celebrated

with cloudbursts of song,

beautiful and terrifying

as any summer storm.

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.

Incessant with uncertainty, one blue jay

Herman Sutter

September 15, 2024

keeps picking up a peanut

and dropping it,

as if he can’t 

decide; as if 

he is testing them.

Each. Is this

the one. Is this?

It is

kind of funny

how he takes each

in his beak, turns it over 

then drops it

only to snatch another;

dropped, in turn,

because there is

a third.

This goes on and on 

until another jay appears. 

And suddenly the nut rejected 

becomes feathers 

flipping, flying wildly 

tipped against the emptiness 

of desire

incessant 

with uncertainty.

I knew 

a boy with wings like that;

crazy as a blue jay.

Herman Sutter (award-winning poet/playwright/essayist) is the author of Stations (Wiseblood Books), The World Before Grace (Wings Press), and “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” St. Anthony Messenger. His work appears in The Perch (Yale University), The Ekphrastic Review, The Langdon Review, Touchstone, i.e., The Merton Journal, as well as: Texas Poetry Calendar (2021) & By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville Press, 2019). His recent manuscript A Theology of Need was long-listed for the Sexton Prize.

Visiting Cardinals

Chip Dameron

September 15, 2024

male redbird offers 

seed to female at birdbath

love at first bite

*

goateed cardinal

hops along under feeder

bebop carrot top

*

meanings of life:

cardinal’s call to its mate,

lone cicada husk

*

cardinal atop

stake holding stained-glass twin

life imitates art

*

rusted roadrunner 

beside stained-glass cardinal

vibrant lifelessness

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.