Public Library, Tulia, Texas

Janelle Curlin-Taylor

June 23, 2024

When I think of Tulia I think of the pillars of support in my young life.

Dr. Richards, our physician, driving twelve miles at dawn

Treating our childhood illnesses before work.

Mr. Hurd and Mr. Jones, pharmacists who reassured us of their knowledge.

The courthouse whose long, stone steps led up to my first public library.

When I think of the Library I remember the librarian,

Her hair in a tidy bun, rimless glasses, sensible shoes.

A woman who had read everything 

And was eager to share.

When I think how she was eager to share I remember 

The Arabian Nights with those 1001 stories

Including poetic descriptions too graphic

For my sex-averse mother.

When I think of my mother, I marvel how she expanded

The education of my tiny school with her own extraordinary early schooling: 

Latin in first grade, Georgia O’Keefe teaching art in the basement,

And the miracle of the Book of the Month Club.

When I think of the Book of the Month Club I remember

“Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”  illustrated by Edward A. Wilson.

My first formal instruction in poetry and my 

Introduction to the world of the Transcendentalists.

When I think of the Transcendentalists – Lexington, Concord, Cambridge, Harvard

I marvel that one could walk the distance between them.

How on the Great Plains 60 miles to Amarillo and a book store,

120 miles to grandparents and aunts and uncles, all in a day's work.

When I think of all in a day's work I marvel at our Tulia librarian

Sure of her vocation to teach the children of Swisher County

To love all the books by all the authors:

Black and White, Christian and Other, near and far.

When I think of all the authors in my first public library I grieve

the censorship gripping the democracy that gave birth

to the Transcendentalists, the Tulia librarian, my mother.

How our Civics curriculum consisted of reading the Constitution.

Now, today,  all those years later,

the shredder and the thought police are

Destroying our future, our present and our past.

My first librarian would be aghast.

Janelle Curlin-Taylor, a Texas poet living in Tennessee, inherited the poetry gene from her grandfather and 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.

In the Rosenberg Public Library, Galveston, Texas

Suzanne Morris

April 21, 2024

Sh...quiet, please....

Up the winding stairs I would go,

every Tuesday and Thursday,

into the hallowed reaches of

the Archives department

the Gulf of Mexico lapping at the

sandy beach a few blocks away.

For hours I would pore over the

huge broadsheets of the century-old

Galveston Daily News

turning each yellowed, brittle page

ever so tenderly, feeling as if

the preservation of the city’s storied past

had been entrusted to my hands:

the infamous storm of 1900 that

took more than six thousand lives

the private dramas that unfolded

behind the shuttered windows

of opulent homes rising from

the center of the island, flanked by

giant swaying oleanders

with their intoxicating scent.

This was in the days before

cave-like microfilm readers

crowned by celluloid spools

confronted those on a quest

to learn details that

many had long forgotten

and some had never known.

Even more remote, the future

of digitization that would

consign to the shelves of

distant memory

the musty smell

of the old diary

that would suddenly materialize

in the hand of the Archivist– 

the only other person in the world

privy to the secret that 

you were writing a novel,

your first– 

paused at your shoulder,

confiding discreetly,

You might find this helpful also....

Suzanne Morris’ first novel, GALVESTON, was published  by Doubleday & Company in 1976.  She continued writing and publishing fiction for 40 years, before turning to writing poetry.  Her poems have appeared at TPA and other poetry journals.

A Chiropteran Reader Visits the Georgetown Public Library

Chip Dameron

April 7, 2024

busy afternoon:

storytime for young patrons,

seniors stocked with books;

then a bat appears,

swoops by and veers: looking for

cozy cave novels?

Chip Dameron’s most recent book is Relatively Speaking: Poems of Person and Place, which combines a collection of his poems with a collection by poet Betsy Joseph. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a former Dobie Paisano Fellow.

Sanctuary

Vincent Hostak

March 31, 2024

Even as spring festers beneath my feet

I wander on the cold concrete 

above the boiling soil 

to the Spicewood library

And like the branch’s namesake

there hangs the smell of good softwoods

among rose brick walls,

floors of glue and carpet squares

In the aft, a canyon of stacks,

my twenty-five-century old friends,

beside a dusty chair,

murmur “Restless soul, you’re home”

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 Musician’s Tale

Betsy Joseph

March 24, 2024

No longer in the midst of middle age,

hair graying and loosely tied back,

the guitarist relayed his vigor at a local college

through medleys of Celtic reels,

lively jigs, and soft laments.

Interspersed were mentions of other venues—

concert halls, public libraries, and once,

surprisingly, even a bookmobile.

Attendance, we learned, is generally healthy

at his typical Celtic events,

but his bookmobile gig yielded just a small group

of three keen and curious souls.

And gladly did he play for them.

As this earnest minstrel of Celtic strains

resumed his pre-planned set,

my thoughts soon shifted to a different scene:

a tired Texas town, a nondescript bookmobile,

and an audience of three attentive locals

joined by a colorful array of books—

wondrous varieties of lore—

wide and narrow, both vintage and new,

these cramped listeners with spines stiff 

from long-held positions on dusty shelves,

perhaps longing to kick up their pages

and dance a jig or two.

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. 

Homecoming

Lori Janick

March 24, 2024

At thirteen I walked through 

the doors of my new home, 

not the strangely structured house

of my parent's choosing

where teenage angst and 

homesickness would haunt 

the rooms for years but

the local library, newly built 

and filled with wonder, worlds 

of words and kind women

who knew their way through

the labyrinth, stories like signposts

as far as the heart could see.

Welcome, whooshed the doors 

on entry, come and find

your future, explore portals 

to the past, wander through

the English moors and shores

of Avonlea, ride wild horses

into realms where every page is 

possibility, where every word beckons 

to who you will become.

Even now, the doors are open.

Even now, stories begin.

Lori Janick was a children's librarian for 33 years where she witnessed daily the power of words to shape our world. Her work has appeared in the Round Top Poetry Anthology. She now devotes her time to writing, gardening, and reading poetry to her attentive dog.

At the LBJ

Milton Jordan

March 24, 2024

And so it was that later

as the miller told his tale,

that her face at first just ghostly

turned a whiter shade of pale.  

                                   Procol Harum, 1967

The Presidential Library, impressive

first viewed across the lawn from the walkway

passing the School of Public Affairs,

opens on a broad ramp stair rising above 

a security station where we noticed

that melody cracking into our memory 

of burning buildings and street struggles.

We might research the archives that detail

those years, shelves of books and monographs,

with careful accounts explaining events,

scan moving images of our own protests,

to learn the facts of dates and places

but we know that age in those lyrics

and the haunting melody of their tune.

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

Mr. Sam’s Library

Thomas Hemminger

March 24, 2024

A classical revival building 

on the fringe of Bonham, Texas 

evokes the timeless imagery of Washington – 

a dignity befitting the

longest-serving Speaker of the House. 

The man who was raised and would labor

just a few miles from this repository’s door, 

would go on to bring electricity 

to this part of the nation – 

and to others much like it. 

His furniture and books, 

his likenesses in every way depicted,

from campaign buttons to 

stately painted portraits,

secure his honorable memory. 

He was friend to almost everyone, 

a uniter of divided houses,

an unwaveringly dependable human 

to steward the work of the people 

from the farm fields to the stars. 

Roosevelt would seek him for the ticket,

but a lesson from our first president

taught Speaker Rayburn that 

ambition without purpose

is a road best left untraveled.

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.

My San Pedro Library: San Antonio, TX

James Higgins

March 17, 2024

It seemed like mine,

spent hours there, nice

place to be, out of the

summer heat, away from

the house & my sisters.

It was so long ago, I guess

I rode the bus there alone

age ten, maybe 12, woman

behind the desk was nice,

suggested books for me, like

Howard Pease’s The Tattooed

Man, sending me off to sea

on what he called tramp

steamers, with his hero

Todd Moran.

It seems as if I always left

that library with seven,

maybe eight books, no

shoulder bag though, so

maybe only three or four, but

I was back soon, hungry for

more & she always had

more to recommend.

Born in Abilene, James Higgins spent the first fifteen years of his life in Texas, living in San Antonio during the school year, then spending most summers with his dad in the little town of Merkel, where both his parents were born. Two different worlds, city life vs. small town.