Texas Secession
The Nation-State Is a Human Construct
Chris Ellery
March 2, 2025
“All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.”
Sam Houston, President of the Republic of Texas
The shrimp in the pools of Enchanted Rock
have never heard of the social contract.
The mystic granite, eons underground,
did not rise to lobby for the rights of man.
What we call Texas never was or will be Texas.
The grackle atop the Capitol flagpole
would never kill or die for a lonely star.
Arroyo and aquifer, river and gulf,
desert and canyon, mesquite and pine.
What we call Texas never was or will be Texas.
Men come with dreams and prejudice.
Men come with eager violence.
Men come with zeal-sharpened pride.
Men come blind to the common good.
What we call Texas never was or will be Texas.
Tell monarch and rattler they belong to a state.
Tell hawk and eagle they can’t cross a line.
Tell wind and sunlight, snow and rain.
Tell every dewdrop. Tell twister. Tell hurricane.
What we call ours never was or will be ours.
Chris Ellery is a native Texan and long-time resident of San Angelo. His most recent collection of poems is One Like Silence, which explores the causes of division in society and offers a vision of radical oneness based on perennial philosophy.
Should
Thomas Hemminger
March 2, 2025
“Should Texas Secede?”
Never was a question so close
to being All hat, and no cattle.
Yet, a closer look might yield
a different set of answers altogether.
“Should Texas secede?”
Yes. Probably so…
from arrogance, vanity,
and pride;
from needs-blindness, irresponsibility,
and indifference;
from artlessness, inauthenticity,
and cynicism.
Yes. Probably so.
Texas should secede.
Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His work has been published locally in Dallas and in The Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Poetry Catalog. His 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.
At the Senate Hearing
Milton Jordan
March 2, 2025
His double-cab, extended-bed Silverado
covered two parking slots with its chrome alloy
bumper beneath the TXFRVR
vanity plate edging into a third
displaying a Lone Star Flag-style sticker
with a one-word message, SECEDE.
The driver and his one passenger climbed down
to the street, claimed briefcases from the rear seat,
crossed Lavaca, and entered the Capitol
through the Legislators and Staff Only gate,
on the pass of District Five’s Senator,
to testify for his Right of Return Act,
numbered SB 1836
by special Senate permission.
Holding place one on the hearing list
the Silverado driver proudly informed
the panel of his native-born bona fides,
large acre ranch ownership and testified:
“Our great state surrendered none of its rights
as a nation,’ he said ‘upon joining
the union of other states, including
the right of return to national status.”
After the bill’s sponsor and his side man
tossed the witness a few soft questions,
the ranking minority member asked,
“Will you continue to cash your Coast Guard
pension and Social Security checks
and file for USDA farm subsidies?”
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.
Thoughts on a Successful Secession
Alan Berecka
March 2, 2025
Down here in south Texas just off the coast
of the Gulf of America, it’s not hard
to see and hear that this place was once
somewhere else. I once asked a good friend
with a thick Spanish accent when his kin
came to this country; he half-laughed,
half-sneered his answer, told me his
people never moved, the border did.
The scales fell from my eyes, my ears
turned red, and the wax melted away.
A few years back, some crazy men
in the Davis Mountains tried to reclaim
the Republic of Texas; it did not end well
for them, but as it seems now, like all things
once considered on the fringe, the idea
of secession has become mainstream.
And I’m thinking maybe these cranks
are on to something, but for me
they aren’t going back far enough.
After all, now that we have combines
and don’t need slaves to pick cotton,
I’m wondering if we could just forget
the Alamo, like we have the massacre
at La Bahia, and go back to being
the Maine of Mexico. Hey, I know
the place has some problems,
but look at the messes it would solve.
We could tear down that wall and save
the jaguarundi. The border problem
would become Oklahoma’s and Windstar
is large enough to detain a gazillion refugees.
Meanwhile, back in Tejas, we’d all get
affordable public health care, we could relax
about which books are read in our libraries,
and reteach the truth in our history classes.
But best of all we’d all get an enlightened,
empathetic woman of color for our president.
Alan Berecka resides with his wife Alice and an ornery rescue dog named Ophelia in Sinton, Texas He retired in January from being a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and is settling into a whole new level of contentment. His poetry has appeared in such places as the American Literary Review, Texas Review, and The San Antonio Express. He has authored three chapbooks, and six full collections, the latest of which is Atlas Sighs from Turning Plow Press, 2024. A Living is not a Life: A Working Title (Black Spruce Press, Brooklyn, 2021) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. From 2017 to 2019 he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.
A Poem that Had Hoped to Remain Decidedly Metaphorical but Couldn’t Help Its Political Veer
Jim LaVilla-Havelin
March 2, 2025
On the thirtieth anniversary of my coming to live
in Texas, I am contemplating what
secession would mean -
The trees outside my window, the birds I just filled the feeder for,
the cholla, the agave and the pencil cactus - for all their hither
and yon growth - could give a damn.
In fact, the mesquites just bend in the wind and even
when they break, fall - they find a way to
dig back into this hardscrabble earth
and live.
They do not break away.
No, this is not
the breakaway republic, not now at least -
nestled gently in the big wings
of the new amerikkan
tyranny.
I’m sending all my friends the link to
Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience”
Secession is a personal stance, and it doesn’t mean
disengagement.
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.