Yesterday’s Traveler

Robert Allen

March 19, 2023

A giant silk moth, blown way off course,

clung to the brick on the side of our house.

Chilled, we thought, wings folded, motionless.

The day was cool, unlike the day before.

More common in the Pacific Northwest,

my son determined from the internet.

Male, by the antennae, and travel-worn

compared to other pictures he had found.

We stood together, wanting it to move

so we could look at those distinctive eyes.

What would it do? Fly away? Disappear?

I nudged it and it fell flat to the ground.

There they were, those round eyes staring back.

My son picked up the weary traveler

and held it in his soft, warm hands. Its wings

began to flutter, and the moth took off

toward the neighbor’s towering oak, then flew

over our heads, nearly touching our roof,

and landed on a smaller oak of ours,

blending nicely with the trunk’s rough bark.

I moved to take another photograph.

Before I stopped, I had a baker’s dozen.

A moment passed; it flew across the street.

I lost it in a hedge, and I was changed.

Today I think of the journey it took,

crossing forests, the Rockies, and the wide

expanse of Texas to get to my doorstep,

covering half a continent to find me.

Is it strange to ask why? Is nature somehow

in love with me? Am I in love with it?

With all the grief and unrest in the world,

could I be wrong to contemplate its beauty?

photograph by Robert Allen

ROBERT ALLEN is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and four cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, the 2023 Texas Poetry Calendar, and TPA. He loves cardio-boxing workouts, hates to throw things away, and facilitates Gemini Ink's in-person Open Writer's Lab.

In the Night School of Perennial Wisdom

Chris Ellery

December 4, 2022

for Aldous Huxley

As he is falling 

asleep

alone

on the forest floor

a breath

pushes gently

against his chest

from inside.

He calls it

a sufi wind

because he means it.

He calls it

great spirit 

love divine 

mother unseen.

The first gust

he names

Mary

love’s womb

and giver 

and the next one 

Rabia

devotion

unsleeping.

His pulse

welcomes

the good air

as lungs

inhale

Plato

Boethius

Eckhart

master of being

gentle Francis 

living love

of all nature

Teresa

Blake

Law

Fénelon

Hillel

Wu Ch’êng-ên

Lao Tzu

John of the Cross

Rumi

Ansari

and that hurricane

Shankara

great reconciler

uniter of ways

who catches his mind

in a snore. 

Each kisses

his heart

coming and going

from star

to star

with so many more.

Thus

repair

of the world

proceeds

as he rests.

Holding them all

his ribs

are anonymous

ancestors

sturdy disciples

sentinels

guarding his breathing

elders 

smiling 

like the evergreens

all around him

deeply rooted

in the most fertile ground. 

  See Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009.

Chris Ellery is the author of five collections of poems, most recently Canticles of the Body, which synthesizes the Christian liturgical calendar and the seven chakras of Kundalini yoga. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com. 

Elegy for a Crotchety English Teacher

Katherine Hoerth

December 1, 2022

I will lay a tank top on your grave

as though it were a big bouquet of flowers

so you can spend eternity at work

doing what you seemed to love—policing

the dress code violations of the school.

Oh, crusty English teacher, whom I miss,

I remember feeling powerful

strutting down those hallways past your classroom,

wondering if you’d catch me once again

wearing something inappropriate—

showing off a slip of naked shoulder

underneath those cold fluorescent lights. 

Cat and mouse, the game we played each morning—

a slip of flesh, your eyes like moons, a claw

extended as you busted me. My face

would turn as red as blood, and how

I’d have to wear an old shirt from the gym

to cover up my shame, the shame of Eve,

the shame you may had to wear yourself

so many years ago, a hoop skirt blowing

in the wind, exposing more than thighs. 

And did you feel vulnerable or strong,

or something in between? I wonder if

you hoped to cover up that vestigial 

of humiliation that you carried

in your heart, that rawest kind of shame

that you and I and even girls today,

who wear their corsets and their skin-tight leggings,

are taught to feel? That vulnerability?

I know you felt in your flesh as well,

that you too were a mouse within the eyes

of the hungry, caught within the talons

of the world, like I was, marching down

those hallways of the school. And now you’re gone.

I wonder what the undertaker dressed

your body in. I hope it’s something slutty

for your sake and for mine and for our daughters’ 

so we can finally bury bury bury

the shame we’re taught to feel in our flesh. 

Katherine Hoerth is author of five poetry collections, including Flare Stacks in Full Bloom (Texas Review Press, 2022). Her work has been published in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press), Valparaiso Review, and Southwestern American Literature. She is an assistant professor at Lamar University and editor of Lamar University Literary Press.

Forgiving Billy Branson*

Marilyn Robitaille

November 20, 2022

On the first day of school, Billy Branson 

Long, tall, thin, and lanky Billy Branson  

set the trash can by my desk on fire

With presence of mind, I grabbed him by the collar

Then held him in a chokehold and said calmly,

“Everyone, please exit to the breezeway now.”

Books scattered, desks all akimbo, smoke filtering

Billy’s eyes glazed as he told me that he loved fire.

“I know,” I said, holding him a little tighter.

I could see it in his eyes, smell the smoke taint

I made him pour the water from my vase

As punishment, turning bright, hot to a simmer

We watched as my roses tumbled, water steamed

Flowers for my birthday, just the day before

Some finality set in motion, some unsung ode

To beauty and to truth and to fire, now all in ashes

Thinking to save souls and stamp out ignorance

Newly minted as a teacher, my first day, first class

What was to become of my reputation now

Who shoulders up to so much drama, so much heat

How could I explain that while I checked roll

Read the rules about politeness and hall passes

About gum chewing and bringing books to class

About notebooks of a color blue, and wide-lined paper

Billy Branson thought of white-heat fire and pleasure

Striking matches, inhaling phosphors, fast action

The primal touch of fire-starting, of ignition

The wonder of the elements as flames flashed

Afterwards, when I told this story, I had no ending 

I don’t know where they took him for his sins

The week before a pasture and a barn had burned

Just near his house, and now they had their proof

Billy never heard me reading Keats or T.S. Eliot

He never heard my rationale for learning commas

He didn’t hear me read aloud from Great Expectations

The other students never spoke of that day again

The day that Billy Branson could not contain himself

Could not hold himself against the orange fire’s passion

So enraptured by fire that he chose self-immolation

Over school and classmates, over poetry and books

Billy Branson, now that years have passed, 

I forgive you, and in the coming days when I retire

I will, I promise, light a candle for you 

*This incident actually happened on my first day of teaching high school, but I’ve changed the student’s name. 

Marilyn Robitaille is in the process of transitioning from Tarleton State University after a forty-year career teaching English. She founded Romar Press, an independent small press, with plans to focus on memoirs through sponsored creativity retreats and workshops. She most recently collected and edited Wine Poems, a forthcoming collection of poems and related photographs, all extolling the virtues and emotional connections related to wine. She has recently been named Managing Director of the Frazier Conservatory (opening in 2023), a planned private retreat in Stephenville, Texas, that will give special priority to non-profit organizations or events that celebrate the land, revitalization, the arts, and regional culture.

Gratitude

Janelle-Curlin Taylor

November 9, 2022

"How will I recognize him?"  I asked.

I just showed up

No appointment, no referral

The most famous mycologist on the West Coast.

"Just look for Eisenhower"

The Registrar said.

World authority on the genus Boletus

"A manly mushroom" he liked to say.

A small Texan in the 

Strange state of California

What compelled me to come

I knew nothing about fungi.

Possessing only a liberal arts degree

In the Dramatic Arts

I had survived Microbiology

What else could I do?

Bounding up the stairs

With a smile as big as Texas

The Eisenhower look alike

Then I mispronounced his name.

An hour later, closeted in the pungent herbarium

"Tiny little" identifying 

Our shared Texas roots

We were the best of friends.

A scribbled message

On the back of an envelope

Carried to the Registrar

And I was admitted.

Jack Daniels and Gold Fish

Endless hours in the lab

Field trips that drew the cream

Of Mycologists: Michigan, Sweden, Germany.

At national meetings we were called

The San Francisco Mafia

Opportunities I never imagined

Mushroomed from this unlikely encounter.

The gift of a talented Texas teacher.

Janelle Curlin-Taylor is a native Texan, actress, mycologist, therapist, minister, and poet. She is married to California poet Jeffrey Taylor.

Teach the River

Thomas Hemminger

November 3, 2022

A

Single drop in a

 Tiny stream combines

To create a mighty, rushing river. 

Just so, a teacher adds their own small part

To the magnificent, coursing stream of every child. 

A fact, a bit of truth, a question for each to ponder, 

A smile, a compliment, a sweet invite to wonder.

The river finds its own way, the route that it deems best. 

For it must make its own path in the landscape that it tests. 

Forbid the teacher hesitate to add their part in time.

Once a moment passes by, it may just be too late to have the same effect.

With every fleeting minute the river changes, never the same again.

One drop may be the strength the river needs to move the mountain up ahead, 

To lift the flounderer in the waves, or to nourish the seedling

Hidden within the earnest of good earth. 

Every drop is a promise. Every tribute a testament of

What expressions of care can create. 

Water can open the bud, and fill the ocean. 

Water will float on the air, and bring down strongholds. 

Water is able to cool the furious, and warm the indifferent. 

Water might take shape, but refuse to be contained. 

Water freezes the very seconds of time, yet it will change the world. 

                       Each teacher is a reacher true through each investment made.

                          May each teacher life renew with what they do and say. 

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His personal hero is Mr. Fred Rogers, the creator of Mister 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.

A Poem for Mrs. McCoy

Kathryn Jones

November 1, 2022

I remember standing in a hallway

outside high school Senior English class,

nervous on the day we each recited 

Hamlet’s soliloquy to Mrs. McCoy.

Her first name was Dorothy, but no one

dared call her that out of respect. 

She stood taller than football players

with her high heels and teased hair,

listening to each one of us quote the Bard, 

cocking her head, savoring every word. 

She loved language, especially poetry 

by Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Burns, Blake,

teaching us to see beauty in every line. 

When I asked her to put Dante’s Divine Comedy

on our reading list, she broke into a wide smile.

Of all the teachers, she was one who set me

on a path of seeking truth, a path of words.

What a poem she was in all our lives – 

shape, voice, harmony lifting off the page, 

alighting on young hearts, embedding in memory. 

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Predictable

Milton Jordan

October 30, 2022

Leaders of the refashioned Know-Nothings

in Texas gleefully devise an end

for faculty tenure and seek to rewrite

course content well beyond their grade level

as they steadily dismantle

the academic stature of the state’s

public schools and universities.

Second-level schools in distant states

expect flurries of resumes this season

from promising young Texas faculty,

while newly minted PhDs in every field

refuse offers from the state’s premier

institutions for instructor’s contracts

at extension campuses in New England. 

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. His most recent poetry collection is A Forest for the Trees from Backroom Window Press, 2022.