Damned Spring

Jesse Doiron

July 9, 2023

Damn the spring. I am a winter man, 

old and withered, ready now to fall. 

All the sap has dried inside of me, and 

the only green I show is vile bile that  

seeps and oozes slow out of my holes. 

I see no reason for the sky to smile,  

or breezy airy clouds, or rain to puddle,  

or birds to wander their ways back.  

Butterflies and fireflies try my soul. 

Squirrels fucking in the trees disturb. 

Buds bounding out of stems confound. 

The yard grows fast its fat sweet grass, 

and the neighbors walk in the morning, 

calling out “Hello” and “How are you?” 

Some stop to talk to me so cheerily of 

nothing more important than the day, 

the beautiful, rising, sun-filled day,  

with its faint, lingering scent of oxygen, 

and the laughter of children at play, 

and someone’s dog barking far away, 

and bicycles spinning quietly by with 

healthy and happy and handsome 

women, whose fulsome breasts roll 

over their firm pink forearms as they 

glide themselves along the road that  

bends so pleasantly in front of my house,  

where they wave to me, always delightedly;  

although, I’m all gone gray and grim and grave,  

and I am damned unhappy that it’s spring. 

Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college in Texas, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.

Happenstance with Spider Silk

Vincent Hostak

June 4, 2023

From a spider silk path,

a whisper between cedars,

she leaps away 

easy to miss, walking the woods in May.

Events informed by light and dew: 

peel a veil, show another.

The dark maker of threads 

grazes my collar,

vanishes like wren songs,

salvages herself.

The dark-mother carries

a spinneret on her stern

makes good, decamps

races in lace lanes in the woods. In turn,

keeping her landing a secret

something canyon wrens cannot:

Here-in-here, Here-in-here, 

We’re Here-up-in-here,

In-treetops-Look-up!

We’re all song, no shame.

Call it happenstance, all

that mingles among limbs,

fogs of pollen,

entanglements even in air, These whims

come tickling the straits of your neck

like wisps of winter wheat. How

did we make it to Spring

through mare’s tails of wind,

to see, hear, anything 

before we felt it?

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.

Mystery

John McMeans

May 14, 2023

Our finely mixed soil slate holds hope

In the dark unseen of its peat

Womb. We look longingly at these 

Cedar beams, this garden bed, and

Wonder whether seeds will wake from

Slumber.

John McMeans lives in Amarillo, Texas with his wife and young son.  He received his BA in Geography and currently works for Refugee Language Project (refugeelanguage.org).  His writing has appeared in a poetry anthology published by the High Plains Poetry Project. 

The restlessness of the restless

Herman Sutter

May 7, 2023

squirrel leaping stump to stump,

scattering sparrows and wanting

wanting wanting always wanting

what the blue jay already has:

peanut, seed, a splash of water, 

the flash of blue chattering,

an unseen sky beyond the ever 

green pausing never wondering why 

the leaves are filled with laughter

and hunger always has such wings.

Herman Sutter is the author of Stations (Wiseblood Books), The World Before Grace (Wings Press), and “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” by St. Anthony Messenger.  His writing appears in: The Perch (Yale University), The Langdon Review, Cider Press Review, Iris, and The Ekphrastic Review, as well as the anthologies: Texas Poetry Calendar (2021) & By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville Press, 2019).  Recipient of the 2021 Best Essay award from the Catholic Media Association, he also received the Innisfree Prize for Poetry. His latest poetry collection A Theology of Need was long-listed for the Sexton Prize.

Winter’s End, Treatment Pause

Elisa A. Garza

April 30, 2023

As spring reaches around winter’s body,

a walk through hazy fog under gray sky

reveals a few silent birds sitting still,

a lone hawk gliding tree line to tree line.

Pushed north by the same humid breeze that brings 

fog, the bayou’s current flows the wrong way,

and ripples collect against dried grass, each 

little nudge rejecting the washed-up trash.

Too quiet, too drab, too unkempt for spring,

when blooms riot, compete for best color,

birds gurgle like brooks and shout hellos, leaves 

race into green, and grass grows above trash 

that rain’s high waters couldn’t run off. That spring,

starting fresh as a promise, deep in my flesh.

Elisa A. Garza has published two chapbooks, Between the Light / entre la claridad (Mouthfeel Press) and Familia.  Individual poems currently appear in The Bayou Review, Amarillo Bay, and PRISM International.  She has taught for public schools, universities, and community programs and now works as a freelance editor.

Spring, 2023

Suzanne Morris

April 23, 2023

Well.  Spring.

It comes in spite.

I’ve been down

the hill

to that place where

the wild red maple grows,

the one you liked.

Though you weren’t here

to drive the buggy down there

it budded out anyway

as if in memoriam

knowing that

under its shade

we would scatter

your ashes.

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.

Kite Days

Betsy Joseph

April 16, 2023

Certain spring Saturdays when a strong breeze signaled it was time,

we would trek to the neighborhood store

returning with kite and string and no small measure of excitement.

Those were glorious times for two brothers and a younger sister

with hours ahead for launching and flying our carefully selected kite.

From a cast-off sheet our mother had donated,

we began cutting strips for the tail which we tied end to end,

carefully knotting until we were satisfied.

The taller of you would hold the kite as high as you were able

while I took steps backward with the tail

handling it reverently, almost like a bridal train.

You both would test the air with fingers moistened,

sometimes bickering about the wind’s direction,

and adjust your positions accordingly.

Then, as prearranged, the faster of you 

would leap mightily forward as the kite was released,

one hand clutching the ball of string

while the fingers of the other hand held loosely

to the string’s mid-way point.

I watched jubilantly as you took off, older brother issuing advice

to younger who ran more swiftly than most boys on our block,

all the while trying to dodge tall trees and pesky electrical lines.

Our launched wonder soon joined other Saturday spring kites,

colorful paper shapes bobbing and mingling,

seemingly mere specks in the cloudless sky.

At that moment, staring up into the dizzying heights,

I could not have felt more important

for I was a sister among the brotherhood,

a member of the tribe.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that 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.

Texas Spring During Covid

Shelley Armitage

April 9, 2023

In this moment you have changed,

Bishop’s Cap, to a mouth, unspeaking,

sipping air, ignorant of neighbors

slamming doors, motorcycles like a pack

of wasps, the fart of an old truck.

We are told shelter in place, yet

people rush as the wind picks up

before dusk carrying vibrations

of a border helicopter slicing air.

You stand, slightly swaying

a leaf of peace.

This is your ripening time 

and I am drawn to get the hose

bring water—a small penance

to you, the saint who, green and patient

all winter, restores calm, 

a creative waiting.

One iris is blooming; the world is on fire.

Can we remember the rhizome’s faith

when bloom is done, when we 

are left with only spent stalks?

You are not perfect. You bend

with less than a full head

in this Texas wind.  But beauty

seems even greater when shaped

of harbor and stealth, fear and trembling.

Will your bloom be that old-fashioned purple

or one of the flashy new varieties?  You are

cousin to those irises of old, stubborn still

tubers of time, of memory of sun,

and moisture, and stillness.

I unfurl the hose, bring the holy water.

You tap an inner sweetness

in this supplicant turned steward,

in this gesture of love.

Shelley Armitage is an emerita professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and her most recent book is A Habit of Landscape (Finishing Line Press) to be released in October.  She also has new poems in the forthcoming collection, Unknotting the Line (Dos Gatos Press). Her award-winning memoir, Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place, was a Kirkus Review starred book and featured at the Tucson Book Festival.

After a Long Ride

Chris Ellery

April 2, 2023

That wild and tough old cowboy, 

Winter, 

is laid to rest

in a raw wind

in a muddy gash

in an ugly brown field

among bent stalks and a few green weeds

with a tip of the hat

from Spring.

Chris Ellery is a native Texan and a long-time resident of San Angelo. His poetry collections include All This Light We Live In and Elder Tree. He is a member of the Fulbright Association, Texas Institute of Letters, and Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com. 

It Might as Well Be . . .

Jim LaVilla Havelin

March 26, 2023

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.

Fishing Lines

Milton Jordan

March 19, 2023

In his seldom used garage we found stored

supplies from sixty-five springtimes on the bays, 

bayous and sluggish streams of our corner 

of the Gulf Coast, fly rods and spinning rigs, 

the lines and lures those might require 

and standing against the side wall for those

slow down summer days, two well worn cane poles

bobbers and hooks strung on neatly wound leader,

his stringer and bait basket on the floor below.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown in Central Texas. He spent his early years along East Texas rivers, the Trinity, and the Neches, his father's favorite watercourse.

The Honey Bees of Windom

Thomas Hemminger

March 12, 2023

You call me to the private road,

Tucked away on our Windom farm,

Leading through the cedar and the post oak

To the opening mead.

As tree gives way to wildflower,

The chorus of your winging

Whispers of your happy work

Among the bounty of the sun-kissed crowds

Of coneflowers, daisies,

baby blue eyes, and strawberry clover.

You hum a summer song

Of sweetest tones to gather

All you need to yield

the life-flow of good earth.

Your tuneful work has wrought

A treasure richer than all kings.

And, you teach the taster of

Your ancient wisdom;

Of health and happiness.

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.