Texas Fathers
What a father teaches
Herman Sutter
November 24, 2024
My father spoke to me
of birds.
Washing dinner dishes
he would talk
of how they cared for me
when I was young.
I remember the sound of his voice
and the water
stirring in the sink.
The ruffle of suds oozing from
his cloth
as he squeezed it out.
Remember that Chinaberry tree?
And all those jays?
He said.
How they cared for you;
so high.
Like you were one of their own.
He said.
In the treetops. You loved
peanuts.
Just like a blue jay.
That was the year your mother
left for Tulsa
with that shoe man
she couldn’t stand.
Must have finally tried him on;
liked the fit.
When he was done, we would sit
on the porch
with his beer and watch the darkness
disappear.
Each year on Father’s Day I rise
early,
take a pocket full of peanuts
to the stump of a tree I never climbed
and spread them
for all to share.
After opening a beer, I pour
it out and listen to the suds
sinking into the earth
and sit motionless, in the shade
waiting for my father’s voice
to fill the air.
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.
Fathers
Janelle Curlin-Taylor
July 28, 2024
In 1947 my mother purchased
Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A newly illustrated edition.
“The Village Blacksmith” was our favorite.
Our father was the village blacksmith
In our small town up on the Cap Rock
In the Texas Panhandle.
In 1962, I found myself in Cambridge, MA
In Longfellow's world
Working for an architect in a small house
With hand hewn floor boards
Wider than the reach of my small hands.
General Washington had housed
Some of his troop there during the Revolutionary War.
Out the side window, Gropius in his last architectural office and
The first Design Research store in America.
Out the front window, a great view of that
Spreading Chestnut tree of Longfellow's poem.
Synchronicity? Perhaps.
Blacksmith shops and Mid-Century Modern
Bookends of my early life.
George Washington, the Father of our country
Longfellow, one of the Fathers of 19th Century American literature
William Ellery Channing, Father of the American Unitarian movement
My passion for the New England Transcendentalists
Giving me the nickname “Channing Christian.”
Gropius, Father of Mid-Century Modern.
So many Fathers.
My biological father: extroverted, loving,
Overflowing with compassion
For teens, old folks, misfits.
Would he have been at home in that Lexington-Cambridge
Culture I found so exciting? Probably not.
Perhaps all those fathers are fleshing out
The "Father” in my life.
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 for Texas Poetry
Assignment for keeping Texas and poetry close. She is married to
California poet, Jeffrey Taylor.
confession
d. ellis phelps
June 30, 2024
when i think of my daughter
i think of her talent
how she recited her poems to me
—my glistening eyes
how she recited the poems competing
how she wanted the ribbon she won
to be blue
when i think of blue ribbons
i think of taking her to the state fair
how she loved the baby pigs
how i warned her about the sow
telling her stories of the pig
i had as a boy the one
who followed me everywhere
i wanted her to follow me everywhere
but she was no pet pig:
stubborn girl
loud mouthed
always moving
bruising her shins
you’ll never be miss america
if you keep bruising your shins
her straight a report cards pleased me
you can be president someday
if you want to be i told her
i wanted her to be miss america
i wanted her to be president
she wanted a husband
she chose one
and then another
after the education i paid for
after the kids there were three
after the alcohol and the divorce
—the doctor she left
—the new husband i hated
i told her: you’re not even my child
that is a confession
i wish i hadn’t made
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.
visitation rights: the 1950s
Sister Lou Ella Hickman
June 30, 2024
once a year
my sister and i rode the train
with our grandmother
some six hundred miles across texas
to visit our father for a month during the summer
once we stopped in san antonio
for an overnight in a hotel . . .
once we rode the sleeper
i remember an upper bunk and thick curtains
once we ate in the dining car . . .
starched white linen table cloth
a black porter in his starched white jacket
took our order
later the conductor
would ask for our tickets
click click click
we rode home . . .
after the wheels stopped
there are still no memories of my father
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.
At Padre Island
Kathryn Jones
June 16, 2024
Father’s Day, 2016
She’s only been gone a month
but it feels longer than that.
He needs to get out of the house,
my sister and I agree.
Dad, where would you like to go?
Padre Island, he says.
We drive thirty minutes from Corpus Christi
over the high curve of causeway to the island
named for Padre Ballí, a Spanish missionary priest.
Our father doesn’t want to go to the county park
with its picnic tables and fishing pier.
Too many people. Too many memories.
We drive farther down the island to Malaquite,
from the Spanish word malaquita for green malachite.
The water is clear there, the color of a cat’s eyes.
We park in the lot, follow the boardwalk
to the pavilion, sit on a bench in the shade.
Seagulls circle us, cawing.
He stares at the Gulf, not saying much.
Dunes frame the view of water and lapping waves.
He used to bring her to Padre Island even though
he didn’t like the wind, salt, sand in the car.
She fed popcorn to the gulls, tossing pieces in the air,
laughing as they swooped to get a bite.
He wants to buy a shell in the gift shop,
a Lightning Whelk, her favorite, holds it up to his ear.
That’s all he wants for Father’s Day, to hear the sea,
the echo of her laughter. I tell him she would love
that we came out here. He looks out at the waves,
nods, tucks the shell in his pocket.
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.
Miss Olivia de Havilland
Elizabeth N. Flores
June 9, 2024
My Dear Children:
I know you heard countless times over the years
that Pop danced with Miss Olivia de Havilland
at a USO dance during WWII.
I wish we had a photo of them smiling
on the dance floor, or a napkin
with her signature on it.
Because I think you doubt that he danced
with such a famous, beautiful star.
I suspect you feel Pop made it all up just
to make me happy, knowing she was
my favorite actress then.
Or if the truth was that no one danced
with him, he didn’t want you to pity him.
I know the story is true because when Pop and I talked privately
about Miss de Havilland, he told me when she asked him
about the war, all he wanted to talk about was me.
His glamorous dance partner
listened to his every word,
and told him he was a lucky man.
And when she saw tears in his eyes,
she danced with him a second time,
which the movie stars weren’t supposed to do.
He never wanted to tell you that he cried
in front of Miss de Havilland. But trust me when
I say that he would never lie to me about crying.
So I tell you now, the story about Pop
dancing with Miss Olivia de Havilland–believe it.
Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, taught for over 40 years at Del Mar College and was the college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator. Her poems have appeared in the Texas Poetry Assignment, Corpus Christi Writers (2022 and 2023 editions) anthologies edited by William Mays, the Mays Publishing Literary Magazine, and the Windward Review.
American Dad
Chris Ellery
June 9, 2024
This cat racking the balls
wears a skull on his arm
and a nimbus of toxic red neon
as he blusters and brags
and breaks. Somewhere,
says he, he has four kids.
“None of them knows I’m alive.
Don’t care.”
An old feral tomcat I knew
when I was a kid
killed a litter of kittens he sired.
A bite through the skull of each.
At Bramble Park, my dad
said I should try
the very most tallest slide
in the whole wide world
and stood at the bottom
to catch me. From the top
he looked very small
but grew bigger and bigger
as I flew down and down
with a whoosh of weeeeeee
into the gravity
of his powerful arms.
Chris Ellery is a retired teacher living in San Angelo. His most recent collection of poetry is Canticles of the Body. A new book, One Like Silence, is forthcoming later this year. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com.
Grandfather’s Joinery
Clarence Wolfshohl
June 2, 2024
I never saw my father’s father.
A carpenter building whatever he could,
he dropped dead during the Depression
digging postholes for a fence
under the Texas August sun.
The one photo of him
and Grandma Etta
in the house told little.
His eyes were shadowed
by his Stetson’s brim.
Only his lean posture
and sinewy forearms
beneath rolled-up sleeves
caught the light.
When I was twelve my father stopped
at a strange house without a word
but “come.” It was in an old
but wealthy part of town
and had a realtor’s sign in front.
Once inside with twice wiped feet,
he pointed to the walnut woodwork
and almost whispered, “Your grandfather
built this house.”
And he let my eyes
do the rest. The trim and mold
were seamless, joinings like the curve
of glass as if the craftsman’s hands
had anticipated the seasons, the damp
and dry, the shifts in the caliche earth,
the rumble of automobile traffic.
And even then at twelve, I knew
those eyes under the Stetson’s brim
would have looked deep into me to see
what the years would bring.
Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri. He is a native of San Antonio and has been writing poetry ever since he was a teenager there. He has been publishing in the small press for over fifty years; his work has appeared most recently in New Texas, San Pedro River Review, Agave, Cape Rock, and New Letters.
Fatherly Advice
Mark Jodon
May 26, 2024
My desk faces the windows in the front
bedroom on the second story of my home.
The windows are filled with my neighbor’s pines,
six towering trunks, limbs laden with green needles
and clusters of brown cones swaying against
baby-blue Texas sky. I watch two young squirrels
chase each other across the lawns. The father
in me wants to tell them to be careful,
to look both ways before crossing the street,
to pay attention. But they are squirrels.
What good would it do? They wouldn’t understand.
They wouldn’t listen even if I told them
the hawks have returned to the neighborhood
and are, at this very moment, perched
in the pines high above their playground.
Mark Jodon is the author of Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press). His second collection, Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books), will be published in June 2024. Mark lives in Houston, Texas.
Homesick
Betsy Joseph
May 26, 2024
Determined to stretch his mind
beyond his West Texas birth place
and the generations he would leave behind,
my father hitchhiked his way to college
and to a different life than he imagined.
Yet along with new friendships and unstifled freedoms
he felt the tug and longing for the familiar.
Phone calls were too costly,
letters from home often too brief.
Once my grandmother sent him a cake,
his particular favorite, which my dad hid in his closet—
away from his housemates and friends.
He noticed the crumbs first,
knew they were not of his leaving
and accused his housemates, who denied
partaking of a cake they knew nothing about.
Shortly after, truth revealed itself in the form
of a small gray mouse scampering from the shelf,
up the wall, scattering cake crumbs behind him.
They formed an arrangement of sorts, he and the mouse.
Dad would continue cutting slices from the front
while permitting his rodent roommate to nibble from the back.
Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems which have appeared 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.
Can I be a Good Father?
Thomas Hemminger
May 19, 2024
I am a child of divorce.
Can I be a good father?
As my son grows, he slowly
leaves the territory
I think I know.
My son grew past the
bottles and diapers,
the napping and board books,
the holding on,
and now I feel—
lost.
I suddenly don’t have
all the answers, anymore.
How can I lead
when I don’t
hold the map?
Maybe it’s time
for my son to lead.
We’ll find our way
together, and soon enough
we will arrive again—
found.
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 where he recently earned first place in the spring 2024 poetry contest. 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.
A Wider Vision
Milton Jordan
May 19, 2024
You drive, he said, and tossed me his keys
freeing himself again to scan details
of the tangled Thicket, reclaim his memories
with ongoing observations, polished
in routine retellings that embellish
tales of long familiar routes, patiently
pointing out today, scenes I’ve ignored
on yesterday’s parallel journeys.
I have come late to his lessons and lack
yet the patience for driving slower routes
and back roads or the necessary
attention of his wide-angled vision.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.
Only A Play
Donna Freeman
May 19, 2024
Mom owned Dad’s time.
She took his strength
already declining.
Both knew their parts,
performed for years,
some comedy, some tragedy.
With tears and laughter,
they shared it all.
Now Dad took the lead
in this new drama,
willingly coached her.
She would be his star.
He saw she could fit the part,
costumed her just right.
Sweater to match the skirt,
hair colored dark again,
clipped short just as
he knew her years before.
The play could now begin.
Each morning of each day
went the same way.
Mom soon grew to know the plan,
acted true to script.
Dad just so glad
he had her back again.
Until the play one day changed.
Mom stood on the stage
suddenly alone.
She looked around.
Where was her coach,
her partner, her friend?
She could not find him.
Her mouth opened wide
but emitted no sound.
Dad, just behind the curtain,
knew his cue, came to her side.
He found her lost words
and delivered them.
The play could go on.
After that performance
Mom was never seen
at the theater again.
Dad, with no one to cue,
soon decided to exit too.
His final bow played
to an empty house.
Donna Freeman has been writing poetry since age 12. Donna’s poetry has appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review, Blue Lake Review, Public's Radio "Virtual Gallery," and several ekphrastic art exhibits. She is a retired clinical social worker and teacher and passionate animal lover.