Despedida

Theresa Garcia-Ruiz 

May 21, 2023

To Despair,

Thank you for your visit.  You’re probably surprised to be hearing from me. 

I have to admit, I’m surprised to be writing to you, too. After all, 

we both know I’ve been avoiding you. I don’t blame you, of course,

but over the years I’ve lost track of the times I’ve hurried through 

sanitized double doors, listening 

like a cat

with one ear 

turned, tuned in to the satisfying soft-close behind me. For a moment, 

it made me happy to think I’d outrun you again. But I already knew 

you didn’t need open doors. You filtered through every time. Like a moonbeam 

lights the leafless trees, you kept a faint glow burning 

in winter’s long, frozen night. 

You followed me. Light without warmth.

You waited. 

Outside the door to room 333

tucked quietly into the hospital corners, squeezing tight

under the bleached-to-bones cotton blanket. Waiting 

to follow me home. Always 

barely a whisper, a faint scent nearly lost

on the ragged breath of midnight 

until that terrible morning. You were there. Finally

I saw you 

joining hands with Sorrow and with Mourning. The beginning 

of my Day of Three Shadows.

Together, you wrapped me in a thick, invisible blanket, an inner hug 

gifting me a strange and utter Quiet. 

Palpable

strong enough 

to mute the rest of the world. Just for a while, 

as I struggled to

see in weaker light, to

tune into the great unspoken, to

find a way to 

breathe 

this new day

this new life

this new me.

Theresa Garcia-Ruiz enjoys life on the Texas Coast.  Her work has previously appeared in the Mays Publishing 2021 Corpus Christi Writer’s Anthology and in Windward Review.  This piece was inspired by a workshop on letter poems hosted by Sarah K. Lenz and the Corpus Christi Writer’s Studio.

To Mama, About Your Childhood Home

Elizabeth N. Flores

April 23, 2023

I drove by where you lived when you were six.

You’re no longer with us, 

having passed away three years short of 100. 

I wonder what you would say 

if you could see where you lived in 1930.

Would you be sad that the house is no longer there?

Would you have no memory of it at all? 

Or would you recall in great detail the kitchen, 

which you always told me is 

the center of the universe in all homes?

Maybe you would not talk about the house, 

its color or location, whether it was drafty or warm, 

or if trees in the front yard lost branches during storms.

Maybe you would focus more on who lived in the house, 

and repeat those endearing childhood memories 

you shared with me over the years, 

even more often when you reached your ‘90’s.

Your mama sitting at the foot of her bed,  

rubbing her dry hands with a special lotion, 

and placing drops on your hands 

so you could feel that comfort. 

Sitting on your daddy’s lap as he shared with you 

two teaspoons of his coffee at the start of supper.  

Family who lived in other houses 

in the neighborhood who came over 

to eat at Thanksgiving 

and Christmas and Easter. 

And more distant relatives

who stopped by for short visits 

when they finished their business 

in town before returning to their farms. 

Would you have something to say 

about what stands there now, 

a ramp to the expressway, 

and the daily noise of high-speed cars?

Would you ask me why I drove by 

what used to be your house when you were six, 

and tell me that surely I’m busy,

and don’t I have more important things to do?

Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, taught for 46 years at Del Mar College and was the college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator. Her poems have appeared in Corpus Christi Writers 2022, an anthology edited by William Mays, and the Mays Publishing Literary Magazine.  

Sugar High

Lyman Grant

April 16, 2023

Your package arrived with that fragile thing

mostly intact. Even our nation’s neglect

of roads and postal vans could not defeat

your practiced skills with bubble wrap and

packing tape. When I opened the box, I lifted

the luminous clump to the overhead light

and saw inside refracted in layers of plastic

and air, itself a kind of puffed pastry, thinly

epidermal, the giant, still moist, baked good

peering, like an eye, ever open. What can

I say? Frighteningly, it sat on the plate

accusing me with its knowingness, reproaching

me for my every timid refusal of faultless

joy. I devoured it without mercy. Yes, I am

unaccustomed to sweetness tasting so

unapologetic. I moistened my finger, pressed

it upon the final wayward crumbs broken

from the crisp edges and finished it off.

Lyman Grant, an ex-pat Texan living in Virginia, has recently published Symptom and Desire: New and Selected Poems.  He can be found at https://www.4doorlounge.com.

Dead Letter Office

Jesse Doiron

April 9, 2023

Dear Hitchhiker, 

You were the one with the heavy hammer hidden away. 

The other guy had an obvious stammer that made him  

hard to understand, but you were such a damn smooth- 

talking-son-of-a-bitch, I thought it might be better if the  

two of you switched places. So when you asked me to  

pull over for a piss, I agreed, hoping when you got back  

to the van, you’d sit way over on the other side instead of  

right behind. But no, you didn’t miss a chance to settle  

in again, right there where you were just before I stopped. 

And you didn’t miss my head either, that was awful clear,  

‘cause, when they found the hammer by me in your piss,  

I was dead. 

Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college in Texas, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.

To Whom It May Concern

Kathryn Merry

April 2, 2023

inspired by these lines from Yehuda Amichai's poem “Letter of Recommendation”

That’s not a scar you feel under my shirt, that’s

a letter of recommendation, folded up tight,

from my father:

“All the same, he’s a good boy, and full of love.”

It may be I present a challenge

Even as I slip this missive to your open heart

Into your open hand

And close it between mine,

Addressing you:

Sweet future someone,

The boy who this concerns

May not, at first, seem qualified for the position,

Being a manic machinist in some hours

And a jazz vocalist in others.

It could be you had overlooked him,

But his name no doubt you knew,

you found it written on your palm -

He’s a magician, too.

The office he aspires to hold

Has yet to seat a trained tinkerist,

Card palace architect,

And mind reader (self-taught).

His experience installing buttons

Just to push them may not be what you had in mind.

Still, this has found its way to you,

At the X on the map he drew -

He’s a cartographer, too.

And that may count for something.

In sum, it is possible there’s

no resume more flawed -

he is

over-confident

all thumbs

and not remotely prepared -

all the same, he’s a good boy, and full of love.

Kathryn Merry was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and spent most of her adult life as an actress based in New York. She is currently living and writing in North Texas with her young family and rascal dog Ralph. Her poetry was featured in Soul Art Renewal by the Greater Denton Arts Council and published by the Denton Poets Assembly in When Poets Meet Poets: A Read and Respond Anthology.

Letter to a Child Never Born

Chip Dameron

March 26, 2023

You were destined to die one day.

So, of course, are we. But your end

came before you took a first breath,

innocent, unaware, floating 

in your warm amniotic sea,

doomed by the genes that produced you:

missing bones in your shortened arms

and legs, spinal stenosis, fused 

joints, abnormal growth in your skull.

Severe skeletal dysplasia,

neonatal ultrasounds showed,

a fatal prognosis. We mourned

your loss yet hope your cell samples

give researchers greater insight

into this terrible outcome.

If your essence is wandering

somewhere in the cosmic ether,

listen for the love this message 

sends. It is all we can say now.

Chip Dameron’s latest book is Relatively Speaking, a two-poet collection with Betsy Joseph. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.

Dad

W. D. Mainous II

March 19, 2023

Looking back I can see now how rough 

things became in that damn valley. 

Some luck in the beginning, but for me 

it ran out. Easy come, easy go. 

Dad, there was shadow everywhere,

the recital of violence never ceased.

But here, the gates are always open,

and there is no charge for anything. 

Winter is hugging Virginia.

I hope the sugar-spun palaces

aren't accompanied by blizzards.

The bitterness will not be too 

much of a nuisance, I trust. 

I know you have difficulty when

the weather is poor. 

Well, things just came apart.

I took a few wrong turns, but now

it's good. I'm happy here, and I'll make 

sure to check on members of the family 

every once in a while. 

You'd love it up here. Well

Dad, I'll see you when I see you.

W. D. Mainous II is a poet living in South Texas, a border city named Edinburg. He works as a tutor and also in healthcare as a provider. He holds two bachelor's degrees and is currently pursuing a master's. Mainous is working on putting together a poetry manuscript and enjoys poetry workshops and interacting with the writing community.

My Son, Life Is Beautiful

Thomas Hemminger

March 12, 2023

I unexpectedly slipped into a painting, Thomas. 

You must come back and see it with me. 

He made it such a lovely day, 

I couldn’t help myself. 

Monet was calling to me through his cobalt blue sky,

and the way he made those lead white clouds float! 

The light of his chrome yellow

danced on the masts and folded mainsails.

He made the wind move so gently

that time seemed lulled to sleep,

but for the gentle chop on the water.

You would have loved

his two vermillion red sloops

resting on the river surface,

like proud flames in a cool scene. 

I could sense a whole other world

where fishes splash, and frogs play hide-and-seek,

under the emerald green watergrass

growing along the banks of the Seine. 

My darling boy,

next time we’ll go together, 

and let Monet remind us 

that life is beautiful. 

“Red Boats at Argenteuil”1875 - by Claude Monet

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His personal hero is Mr. Fred Rogers, the creator of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Through America’s favorite “neighbor,” Thomas learned the importance of loving others and giving them their own space and grace to grow.

Letter from the Heart

Betsy Joseph

March 5, 2023

Ah, my water child:

You were designated to be born—

until you weren’t.

The lively acrobatics which you performed

in the warm waters of safety—

minnow-like at first and then more dolphin-like—

suddenly eased and then stopped altogether.

I was left to wonder:

Did the finger of fate make that determination?

I cannot think you would guide your own ending—

that you would plan cessation of life before birth.

You had communicated so differently to me.

In Japan, the Buddhists would bestow the name

Mizuko on you.

They would hold a special service,

Mizuko Kuyo, and bow to you.

Already you would be honored.

And the god Jizo would gently ferry the essence of you

to the next world, a place to await your time for rebirth.

I think of you in the imagined form

I carried for thirty-eight weeks

and have decided on the final journey you will make.

From the waters of my womb, we will carry you to the river

where you were one day to sit by the fern-edged bank

throwing twig and leaf boats into the slight current,

watching them drift slowly from sight.

We will memorialize you there, 

my water child,

on the morning of the Summer Solstice

where you will have traveled from one body of water to another.

I will prop a parasol to cast a shadow 

just long enough to protect you from the sun, 

your essence enclosed in a simple stone vase

containing one white rosebud and a mother’s silent tears.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that 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.

Dear Immigrant,

Thomas Quitzau

February 26, 2023

Oh, beautiful, poor, tired Immigrant–

Are you sure? Are you confident?

The land o’ the free taken lit’rally

For freedom’s not most prevalent I feel—

Many harsh laws “for me but not for thee”

Flame o’ Lady Liberty’s torch surreal. 

Chopper swarms swoop to peek at her copper,

Sworn servants, jock’ying, corruptly relate

Who’ll tell the greatest jocular whopper

While savings, socked away, do dissipate.

Come one, come all! There’s plenty o’ nothing

To split with the commoners and natives

Like former landings subtly surprising,

Knocked off tribes to make way for creatives.

Welcome, huddled masses, newly attuned!

Have you thought about settling on the moon?

Signed,

DHS, TSA, CIA, FBI, NSA, HUD, USA, . . .

Thomas Quitzau grew up in the Gulf Coast region and worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A self-ascribed member of the ZenJourno School of poetry, Tom recently relocated with his family to Long Island, New York where he teaches and writes.

Letter from Sunnyside

Suzanne Morris

February 19, 2023

Dear Susan,

I’ve been thinking of you and

reminiscing as another year slips by– 

I wonder if you recall a morning

during my visit to Manhattan

that October long ago

when first we knew each other: 

caught in the spell of

our own wordsmithery

we journeyed by train to the

hamlet of Tarrytown

to see the home of the writer

Washington Irving

with its quirky Dutch stepped gables

and pointy roof

overlooking the Hudson River.

It was a cold and misty,

blowy morning,

the kind that might portend

the dark and dismal night when

Ichabod Crane, superstitious 

schoolmaster of

the storied village of Sleepy Hollow

rode a poor broken-down nag

deep into the woods

haunted by the galloping

headless horseman

never to be seen again.

We stood together

beside a table within

a small chamber– as if conjured there

by the writer himself–  

gazing at the river through a

window veiled in a

thin curtain that billowed crisply

in the stiff, chill breeze.

And on this table stood a

tall candle, its willy-nilly light

casting bizarre shadows like

goblins upon the walls.

I remember your New York-sensible

trench coat and rain hat, and

how your cheeks glowed rosily

above the candle flame

when you turned to me

and smiled.

How young we were then!

How innocent of the twisting

narrative unfolding before us

where, at any turn, we might have

lost our way.

Now, whenever I gaze at the

framed picture of Sunnyside 

hanging upon the wall

in the room where

I conjure my stories,

I remember being there with you

in that moment, how the

candle flame between us

flared and flickered

but never went out.

Yours always,

Suzanne

A note:  Susan Schwartz was Suzanne Morris’ book editor for a career spanning 40 years, beginning with Morris’ first novel, Galveston (Doubleday, 1976).

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet.  Her poems are included in various anthologies, including No Season for Silence (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2020) and Gone, but Not Forgotten (Stone Poetry Journal, 2022).  Examples have also appeared in Texas Poetry Assignment and The New Verse News.

Letter to the Better Swimmer

Vincent Hostak

February 12, 2023

I write to you of the Lake again,

the great emptiness east of the City.

Without it, all the paths we ran

might march onward to the Michigan Dunes,

and scores of schooners, their old deckhands

would never be stranded there. 

How many more Polish bakeries

might have been planned? Your father laying

brick courses for each.

We ditched our class and went to swim

by the bare seawall near Oak and North.

Easy to conceal, we so thin

our absence would never be known.

I’d only bathed in the South’s warm bends

and when at last I plunged, 

you mocked the shape my crooked mouth made

cutting in air a soundless howl

as the cold grasp locked in.

My lips went blue as the world and you

circled inside the wake I made.

My teeth chattered; your laugh surged

as you swam out beyond the ring.

How many knots did your backstroke chart?

Did you hold a map in your mind?

The Lake color changed each time I glanced:

refraction, reflection? I missed the lesson

preferring your boundless crawl.

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

A Father’s Comfort Remembered

Antoinette F. Winstead

February 5, 2023

Dear Father,

Mother found a letter you wrote me

nearly forty years ago

an offer of comfort

for my grief

over a friend lost too young

on a Texas football field.

As I reread your words

written in your perfected

engineer learned print

I remembered with visceral recall

the warmth of your love

and why you have always been

my touchstone.

Overwhelmed, I wept

as if the wounds of loss

freshly dealt

my anguish anew

for I’d truly forgotten

the comfort of your words

offered all those years ago.

Two pages

sealed with love

four decades old

father to daughter

a remembrance of what was

and continues in my heart

though now your passing I mourn 

With no letter of comfort

for you, my dearly beloved father

a decade’s departed

as you once penned for me

that long-forgotten September

forty years ago

when I took for granted your wisdom.

Your precious wisdom

in my mourning 

thought lost forever

until Mother found your letter.

Even in death 

you remain 

my touchstone.

With love eternal,

your daughter.

Antoinette F. Winstead, a poet, author, playwright, director, and actor, teaches film and theater courses at Our Lady of the Lake University where she serves as the Director of the Escobedo School of Mass Communication and Theater and also as the Program Head for the Drama program. Her poetry has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Voice de la Luna, and the 2022 Texas Poetry Calendar. For her poem “Life Is” she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the editor of Jerry Jazz Musician.

To My Father’s Orchids

Kathryn Jones

January 29, 2023

Tell me, 

please tell me what he did

to make you bloom,

to convince you to send up a flower spike, 

to open your buds and reveal such splendor,

to make your roots crawl out of their pots,

to dangle like fingers reaching for the light.

Whisper the secrets you told him about beauty

so he never lost faith you would bloom again.

Turn your faces to me – some flat, some with a ruffled lip, 

some with fringed petals, some striped, some spotted –

tell me how you all came to thrive in this place

and bloom – bloom! – for him but not for me.

You do not have any choice now, do you understand? 

He is gone and not coming back, your caretaker, your god. 

He left all of you to me, despite – perhaps because of –

my shortcomings, so I would have something to tend.

Now your fleshy green leaves sag – are you grieving as I am? 

Take heart that he loved you like children,

showered on you his time and energy and devotion. 

Now I really need to know: What makes you bloom?

Can you please, please, please 

tell me?

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

To Mark Rothko from the Chapel

Kathryn Jones

January 22, 2023

I enter your octagon again this morning.  

Sit on a bench. Float among the planes. 

Meditate in this holy space without religion, 

without crosses, only fourteen black paintings

in this small, silent, windowless place. 

Time hangs by gossamer threads of thought. 

You designed it so nothing distracts the mind,

no artificial boundaries, no bright museum glare,

only a muted glow from the skylight and floating

rectangles of black – perfect absorbers of light, 

color of night, ancient caves, charcoal, burnt bones,

sealed tombs, underworld, holes in the universe. 

Everything here invites contemplation – of life, death, 

eternity, whether there is an eternity. I feel sorrow 

in the black spaces. I feel comfort in their existence. 

You created all of this for us, then left it, left us, 

left the obelisk purposely unfinished, broken. 

You spoke of truth, freedom, justice. Such anarchy.

Vandals saw only darkness in your work, splashed

white paint by the entrance, left handbills that read 

“It’s okay to be white.” They did not understand that

white is the sum of all colors of light. I pray for them 

and the world in this sanctuary of sacred beauty. 

In the stillness you created, I rise to meet you.

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Letter To A Poem

Donna Freeman

January 15, 2023

Dear Poem,

You are finally ready to leave.

You came to me from thin air,

but grew and grew.

You are an inspiration to me.

Never the classic child,

you had ups and downs:

not difficult just different,

going your own way. 

But there are no words to say

what you have meant to me. 

I confess there were times

you were the cause of frustration

and tired me with repeated demands

I couldn’t understand.

Sometimes I didn’t even like

the sounds of you,

though others said you were

just going through a phase.

You outgrew your demands,

actually stepped in line.

Just like your sisters and brothers,

I guess you’ll turn out fine. 

But you are still so young

I worry what will happen.

Are you safe to leave, 

to be in public alone?

No more questioning,

I send you off enveloped

in motherly love. 

Hope you land safely.

Write me as soon as you can.

Donna Freeman started writing poetry at age twelve. Her poetry appeared 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 “2020 Virtual Gallery" as well as ekphrastic exhibitions at Imago and Wickford Art Galleries in 2022

To My Niece, Regarding That Skeleton

Robert Allen

January 8, 2023

Child of eleven, bright red hair, first girl-child

our family has had in a hundred years,

you kneel before your overbearing grandmother.

Jennifer Louise, the crone’s voice booms,

I told you not to go into that closet.

Rice grains on the floor bite into your soft skin

while pictures from a small black photo album

race through your mind: men and women

you may not know, in suits and flapper’s clothes,

smiling faces, one like a teenage Grandpa,

oil wells and mud holes in the ground,

Model Ts and trains and faraway places.

Then, that burning cross, aglow in the night.

Men in white sheets and pointed hoods,

secretly engaged in some dreadful ceremony.

You want to run, a deer caught in the headlights,

feel disbelief, fear, guilt, revulsion, shame,

and ache to understand Grandma’s punishment.

You saw what grownups wanted to keep hidden.

Hearing your story decades later, I know

you were not at fault. Mom and Dad did you wrong.

Jenny, I cannot take it back or make it right,

but it is true, the worst thing you imagined:

Your Grandpa’s oldest brother was a Klansman.

I apologize for the things my parents did to you

in their effort to suppress and not explain

and send, though very late, a better uncle’s love.

Robert Allen is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and four cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, the 2023 Texas Poetry Calendar, and TPA. He loves cardio-boxing workouts, hates to throw things away, and facilitates Gemini Ink's in-person Open Writer's Lab.

Letter from a Homesick Cousin

Milton Jordan

January 1, 2023

Yours of the 16th (November) arrived 

yesterday, eight weeks on from its postmark -

Overseas letters seem always delayed, here -

You sent this new address, but no reason

for y’all’s move back beyond the Balcones.

Is your Route 2 address near Doc’s old place,

maybe, or some miles away, crowded

with neighbors on both sides, if towns out there

grow as quickly as elsewhere in Texas? 

Or, is the country still as empty now 

as when we all went for summer visits?

Are folks still raising cattle and goats

near that stream tumbling over small boulders

murmuring across the scree in the shallows

to drop pebbles smoothed by their journey

before reaching the Sabinal above the park?

If you find a few blue-green, stream-smoothed stones 

like those Doc used to give us to take home

every year, please send them to remind us

what it’s like to be in Texas listening

to country music from Amarillo and Abilene. 

John wanders the house humming that chorus

from Gary P. Nunn’s tune, but the three year

contract we signed schedules only one break,

just three weeks, still eleven months away.

Pardon my lengthy meanders, 

but as Shaw - I think it was Shaw - said 

‘If I’d had more time I’d have been briefer.’

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

Letter from Home

Anne Jordan

December 28, 2022

Dear Aaron,

How dear to see your handwritten note;

I see you there, somewhere, pen in hand.

Here the February sun has attracted

Cedar Waxwings who face it quietly

save for their plaintive whistles.

I watch them through Billy’s bedroom window.

You’ll want to know, Pflugerville

fired their football coach last week.

Love, Mother  

Anne Jordan lives with Milton in Georgetown, Texas, where she ruminates on 20th-century American composers and poets laureate.