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.