Sleeping Beauties

Suzanne Morris

January 28, 2024

For years I gave no thought to Mama’s many pairs of shoes

stored on the long shelves of our big hall closet when I was growing up.

Then, while in Houston today I passed by the old Sakowitz Bros.

building, now a ghostly white marble shell

rising seven stories above the corner of Main and Dallas

its luxury first-floor show windows undressed and bare– 

I could see all the way through from the front to the rear

and watch the traffic speeding by on Fannin.

Long gone, the bright red awnings, the crisp American and Texas flags

snapping on diagonal poles on either side of the palatial front entrance 

and the stylish Sakowitz Bros. sign at the top that lit up red at night.

Gone, the plush-carpeted salons inside, deep and wide,

with tufted chairs, wall mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and

wafer-thin mannequins posed strategically in designer apparel.

Mama never set foot in Sakowitz 

but you would think she had from the

many pairs of shoes she purchased there.

Far exceeding the space in her small bedroom closet, shoes crowded out

sheet sets, pillow cases and various small appliances, 

swathed in softest tissue paper and secreted in their rectangular boxes

like rows of sleeping beauties deep in their swoon:

shiny black patent, suede, leather kid in shades of blue, red, gray, tan, green;

opera pumps, t-straps, slingbacks and savvy two-toned spectators.

Our elegant next-door neighbor worked in Women’s Shoes,

with its semi-circular red leather banquette overlooked by

an exotic jungle scene with extravagant

green palm leaves and ruby-throated flowers.

Twice a year during semi-annual sales, Mrs. Toler searched among

stock room shelves for size six-and-a-half quads

and personally delivered assorted pairs of

I. Millers, Andrew Gellers, Sakowitz signature brand and more

which Mama would hasten away to dreamland,

then close the chamber door.

When Mama died, 30 years ago, we donated her shoes to Goodwill.

Only today, as I paused to gaze upon the empty Sakowitz store

did I remember Mama’s sleeping beauties,

and start to wonder why she never roused a single pair

to slip them on and wear.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet.  Her work is included in several poetry anthologies, most recently, Lone Star Poetry (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022).  Her poems have appeared in The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Pine Cone Review, Emblazoned Soul Review, and Creatopia Magazine.  Ms. Morris lives in Cherokee County, Texas.

I Would Ride a Cow Horse

David Taylor

December 24, 2023

(for Sandy Collier, horse trainer)

If I knew how to be a river,

I would ride a cow horse.

And we would be water and rock,

and would move 

with and without lead, 

intuition and intention as the same damned thing.

Guts and skin,

Hip and eye,

Reins and ass,

Brain and muscle,

Forelock and forethought,

Pulse and pastern,

would move like a stream,

together, separate, one.

And the cow would be the angle of land,

the gravity we work with,

driving us as we box it on one side 

until it flows to the other.

We’d eddy and turn.

We’d fall and pool.

We’d braid ourselves along fence sides

And turn, and turn, and turn.

And the three of us would be 

a river in a cow pen,

moving, moving, moving.

Water, rock, and what moves us.

Three and one.

The same damned thing.

David Taylor is an Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Environmental Humanities Track in the Sustainability Studies Program in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. His writing crosses disciplinary boundaries and genres—poetry, creative nonfiction, scholarship, and science writing; however, at the core of his work always is a concern for environmental sustainability and community. David is the author and editor of eight books.

Pondering the World Population Clock

Chris Ellery

December 3, 2023

“You know, when you question, it slows you down.”

Logan’s Run (1976)

Where would the planet be

without disasters, diseases, murders, wars

subtracting so many from the sum of homo sapiens?

As it is, the meter on the webpage of the World

Population Clock is ticking up conspicuous consumers 

like numbers on a petrol pump, 100K net gain so far today. 

Should we try to slow it down?

What if Nature for nature’s sake could suddenly require

a constant bottom line of human lives, an equilibrium—

one death in time for every birth?

How long, Sibyl-like, would you keep your thread 

uncut? Would you ever volunteer to leave your place 

for some unborn Picasso, Einstein, Saint Teresa? 

How many more catastrophes and wars  

would Mother Nature need to balance birth and death?

I saw a movie once in which no one was let to live 

past 30. I don’t recall, exactly, how many years this was 

after mad Jack Weinberg, mortified by bombs and lynchings,

said to me and my whole generation 

that no one with 31 years or more is worthy of trust. 

But I’m pretty sure that he and all 

those other Flower Power guys were in their 30s at the time

still wanting to be trusted, and Abbie Hoffman, 

who is sometimes blamed for Weinberg’s angry line, 

had renewed himself as Barry Freed and was, like Logan, 

living on the lamb. Proving what? I don’t know.

The point is in the movie no one wanted to go.

I was young, and this seemed true. Now it seems more true.

Even as I watch the meter on the webpage of the World 

Population Clock streaming humans into being

faster than the heart rate of a hummingbird.  

As I am old, a charming superfluity above three score 

and ten enjoying the pebbles and clouds, it makes me wonder.

What if a woman I love were in labor tonight 

with a baby that already has a name.

What if it was up to me to make some room for the little one? 

What if Nature for nature’s sake demanded 

such a thing, a death for every birth in time? 

Would it be wise or crazy, kind or cruel? 

Would it save the earth? 

Chris Ellery is a retired professor with lots of septuagenarian and octogenarian friends. Among his collections of poetry is Elder Tree, an extended contemplation on the 13th and final month in the Celtic calendar. 

Recollections and Soliloquies (VI & VII)

Stefan Sencerz

November 26, 2023 

VI 

 Where I belong I do not know 

perhaps a hermit in past lives 

yearning for days as a lover? 

perhaps a lover in this life 

longing for days as a hermit? 

VII 

What can I learn I am not sure 

could you please teach me  

how to remember  

the sound of morning mist 

falling off blooming camellias?

Stefan Sencerz, born in in Warsaw, Poland, came to the United States to study philosophy and Zen Buddhism. He teaches philosophy, Western and Eastern, at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. His essays appeared in professional philosophy journals (mostly in the areas of animal ethics and metaethics) and his poems and short stories appeared in literary journals. Stefan has been active on the spoken-word scene winning the slam-masters poetry slam in conjunction with the National Poetry Slam in Madison Wisconsin, in 2008, as well as several poetry slams in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Chicago.

Age

Thomas Hemminger

November 19, 2023

It’s a grim specter 

that chases us all 

without ever bothering 

to explain why. 

Can’t outrun it. 

Can’t trick it. 

Can’t stop it.

We might delay its effects

and given enough time . . .

but no one can lie that well.

Everything ages.

Our body.

Our mind. 

Our will. 

We get used up, 

sunbaked, and 

weathered. 

Why?

Then, life renews itself; in 

a fresh sunrise,

a budding springtime, or

a baby’s first cry.

In those moments,

Age isn’t chasing us anymore.

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. 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.

Grandfather’s Monologues

Milton Jordan

November 12, 2023

Our grandchildren have heard and understood

experts explain intricate calculations 

required to send satellites into orbit

in galaxies long light years away.

Can we interest them in outlines of our  

favorite scenes when they’ve seen full-color 

images of the surface of distant 

planets snapped by robots controlled from Houston?

Will the tedium of oft-repeated 

stories hold their attention through these old

tales of rivers merging before the lake

covered them behind the Bureau’s high dam?

Can well-known descriptions of forests 

once dark with foreboding undergrowth

continue to entertain children 

whose hands hold the latest gaming devices?

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

Texas Questions

Jim LaVilla-Havelin

November 5, 2023

when

mesquite

bends, dips, kisses the earth

and stays

that way 

long limb

against

the ground

is it seeking unlikely water?

is it

        in answer

        to

   wind?

  drought?

      gravity?

weakness?

  is it, 

  for all the life and leaf

  that follows,

just

giving up?

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.