What fruit will fall from this tree

Herman Sutter

April 6, 2025

The sanctity of office

is only found

in ownership

and who it is

who owns the ship

of state. Governor

Abbot has forgotten

he is not

the office, not the state,

and not a profit

able servant

when he assumes

his own decrees

are signs of his own

ership and of his own

sanctity.

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.