I’d Like To

William James Rosser

December 1, 2024

I’d like to scale the palisades

to the staked plains, unnoticed.

As elevation rises that way

sunsets fade pink behind cotton fields.

I wouldn’t mind the Far West, 

up toward the crest, 

then slope horseback south,

past cactus down the deep bend –

roam there the ghost mines for mercury.

Never have I braved the thick brush,

descended the long valley and seen

the grapefruit trees blossom.

I’d like to walk the groves early morning.

Then cross the march into some country.

Nor have I negotiated the estuary lake,

though I stayed close by reptiles once. 

Some places they saunter from the bayous 

into side streets smiling and uncaring.

And though the shelled, still beach is gray,

still, I’d like to stroll the bay shores 

barefoot with redfish in the shallows 

and in season. 

They kiss toes with the lapping gulf water –  

I can’t do those things, most things now, can I? 

Not hobbled up past the Blackland Prairies, 

dry riverbeds, my reservations, autumn abed. 

Come, long winter.

William James Rosser is a retired sommelier and poet from East Texas stock and grew up on the Northern Blackland Prairies. He studied journalism and literature at Lamar University and tended toward New Criticism and lyric verse. Among others, Rosser admires Emerson, Warren, MacLeish, and Lanier. He writes from Tulsa. 

I Am Texas

Thomas Hemminger

November 24, 2024

I ride on the mighty roar

of a plains twister, that

cuts the earth like a plow.

I hover over the hidden

places of the lowly, who

huddle in the tall grass.

I keep my watch over all

from the longhorn to the moorhen

from the raptor to the river bass.

Those who are thirsty

may drink from my rivers.

Those who are hungry

may eat from my supply.

I am Texas, and

I stretch out my sky

toward a golden horizon.

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.

Lone Star PowerPoint

Milton Jordan

November 17, 2024

This backwater slough you see on the screen

fills the old bed of my major Pine Belt

river where she ran before cutting 

a more direct route through these sand hills

too soft to hold her insistent current.

And tracking west across ridges you see 

in these images, we’ve reached this primary 

artery that marks the edge of my piney woods 

where the Dogwood you see here blooms,

before cedar and post oak take over.

The map sketched here shows the expanse

I fill and other rivers on my western flank

which run more swiftly and more shallow

as you see over stone and small boulder

beds we see here and more prominently here.

Not to bore you with excess rumination,

I remember these streams, undammed,

running near flood stage in this older photo

and earlier as here when these folks 

pitched their hide tents along this river’s bend.   

In these closing images, I focus

on the Big River, with residents

crossing from either side to visit

or work together as if this stream

were less a barrier than those sand hills.

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

The Lost Pines Speak

Vincent Hostak

November 17, 2024

An unlikely belt of tall Loblolly Pines dating back to before the Pleistocene Epoch stands near Bastrop, Tx.  They are separated from their nearest relatives by at least 100 miles.  Those live on the outer edge of a great region of Pineywoods. These cover parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and far East Texas.  The isolated groves in the Hill Country are known as the Lost Pines.

We, the Lost Pines, make our last stand here

in the gravelly soil of Central Texas.

A conclave of lanky strangers, nothing like you,

severed from our forebearer, the mother root

which wades in far off Mississippi muck.

We’re lean, thick-skinned and coppery.

If our shortleaf diadems weren’t so sparse

we’d eclipse the sun and starve the buckthorn.

But we’re not insensitive, that is not our way.

We’ve been shown mercy a time or two

from fires and the lumbermen,

so let us pin our garish yellow catkins to our collars

and proudly stain the plains in Spring.

While, rising from the mustard-glow,

the last of us curl our way toward the sky.

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.

Turning Blue

Nicholas Allison

November 17, 2024

For a moment,
I considered change—
a flicker of curiosity
pressed against my borders.

But the tired two-step is easier
than learning a new waltz.
Five decades have taught me
to hold familiar hands,
to hum old songs
in a voice steady with habit.

We build walls around ideas here.
I’ve heard the whispers,
felt their pull—
something loose, unformed,
waiting to take shape.

Maybe someday.
But for now,
I keep spinning,
tracing the same worn paces,
letting the dust settle
where it always has.

Nicholas Allison lives in Austin, TX with his family and two weird dogs. He has roamed the globe as both a soldier and civilian, collecting experiences that now find their way into his poetry and musings, which can be found at thetruthabouttigers.com, if you’re into that sort of thing.

My Nation Has Spoken

Betsy Joseph

November 17, 2024

Just as lichen strangles

the character of tree bark

because its will to overcome

drives its need, sickens the tree

with its appetite to spread its frenzy

from the bottom to the top,

I now watch a different frenzy build

within the nature of humankind,

distilling a long-ago pride

that becomes more tattered with time

as anger builds and breeds contempt,

threatening to suffocate the voices of hope

still clinging to, still singing of 

democracy and its preservation—

only possible if we stand close and strong

in the forest of our land,

our skin, bark-tough and free

from the blight of lies,

from the threat of tyranny.

I live to breathe calm again.

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. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.