A Math Puzzle

Carol Coffee Reposa

November 28, 2021

Grat.i.tude:  Nine letters, five consonants, four vowels;

Middle English, from Old French and Late Latin.

One:  A full lunar eclipse

That reconfigures the heavens.

One:  A solitary Monarch

Magically materializing in my garden.

Two:  Glasses of champagne

I savor at a surprise birthday party.

Three:  Doses of vaccine in clear glass vials

That neutralize millions of losses.

Four:  Wobbly first steps

Taken by my newest grandchild.

Twelve:  Fragrant red long-stems

A neighbor leaves on my porch.

Twenty:  The number of 500-milligram aquamarine capsules

That keep me out of the hospital.

Infinity:  Watching the sun slowly rise

On Thanksgiving morning.

The poems, reviews, and essays of Carol Coffee Reposa have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, The Texas Observer, Southwestern American Literature, The Valparaiso Review, and other journals and anthologies. Author of five books of poetry—At the Border: Winter Lights, The Green Room, Facts of Life, Underground Musicians, and New and Selected Poems 2018—Reposa was a finalist in The Malahat Review Long Poem Contest (1988), winner of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Poetry Contest (1992), and winner of the San Antonio Public Library Arts & Letters Award (2015). She also has received five Pushcart Prize nominations in addition to three Fulbright-Hays Fellowships for study in Russia, Peru, Ecuador, and Mexico. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and of the editorial staff at Voices de la Luna, she is the 2018 Texas Poet Laureate.

Give Thanks

Jesse Doiron 

November 28, 2021

If we were oceans deep, 

we’d thank God for the wind 

that makes us dance with  

waves and mists. 

If we were grass, 

we’d thank Him for the rain 

the seas have carried 

to make us green and grow. 

If we were beasts, 

we’d thank God for the  

waters and the lands 

for we need these to prosper. 

But we are not those things. 

We are His chosen ones 

and thank God not enough 

for all His love has offered. 

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, 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.

Out of Nowhere

Robert Allen

November 26, 2021

This thank-you note comes as I leave

the gym, wiping the sweat from my brow

with a hand whose knuckles glow red,

black gloves tucked under an arm. I admire the 

skill of younger men with lightning-quick

hands. Back when corn chips sold for twenty

cents a bag and we both worked as stock

boys at Joske’s—that clothing store out on the

loop, not the one downtown with the big

Santa Claus on the roof—you don’t seem that

much bigger than me, but I feel like a

Schwinn bicycle to your Mack truck. The skin

on your bulging arms glistens. Your

forehead and cheekbones catch the light like

chrome metal bumpers. Your legs move

like mag wheels. Your hands look like clamps

with steel tendons inside. Whenever you

see me you call me ugly, yelling it out from

the far side of the store while we gather

clothes hangers into our bins, using that name

when you corner me on the elevator. “Hey,

Ugly,” you say. “You sure are ugly. Hey you,

Ugly!” If you gave me a quarter to buy

you some chips, I wouldn’t argue. One day

the week after Christmas you come looking

for me. I have kept the nickel change. Your hand

appears out of nowhere, smacks my teeth

bloody, sends me to the floor. In the slow-motion

replay I kiss the palm of your hand, lips

touch the heel of your palm. My head oscillates

from the speed and force of the blow.

A voice commands me to stay down. I taste

the blood in my mouth. Lying on the

floor, I squirm in my pocket for a nickel. I toss it

to you, which is a big mistake. I crawl

over to the coin and reach it up to you. I hold

out that nickel even now, in gratitude.

Robert Allen is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and five cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Writers Take a Walk, and Poetry on the Move. He co-facilitates Gemini Ink's Open Writer's Lab.

Born on Thanksgiving

Melanie Alberts

November 25, 2021

Morning—

nine months along

my mother feels 

the pressure

for a perfect meal

Then I arrive

my sister has

to whisk the gravy

the following year

Mom hears the news

Our president died

in a Dallas parade

every birthday since

tears mix

with buttercream

Two siblings later

Mom refuses help

with washing up 

we sink awful into

the sofa—watch thru

The television window

as a Cardinal dives 

in thanksgiving—

sunflower seed feelers 

rise into a warm world

Writer and psychic artist Melanie Alberts works at the University of Texas at Austin. Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in the Cold Moon Journal, Texas Poetry Assignment, Ransom Center Magazine, Just This, The Austin Chronicle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and others. Follow Melanie on Instagram @clair.circles.spirit.art.

Dreaming in Noir

Fernando Esteban Flores

November 24, 2021

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Nine

It was late November

The light was beginning

To thin out over the streets

The shadows spoke

Of loss & love

Whispers pierced the air

Indecipherable yet

They floated above the trees

Like kites stringing along

A line of untenable thoughts

It was then that Lao Tzu

Spoke out of a passing cloud

As in the days of old

When the Supreme Presence

Made its will known

Through the prophets we are told

Seek the solitude of the soul

He said

& the odor of melancholia

Filled the evening like the 

Fragrant burning of copal

& the last rays of the sun

Dropped like a red net

Over the world

Fernando Esteban Flores is a native son of Tejas and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He has three books of poetry: Ragged Borders, Red Accordion Blues, & BloodSongs available through Hijo del Sol Publishing. He also appears in multiple journals, reviews, newspapers, and online sites. Flores was selected in 2018-19 by the Department of Arts & Culture of the City of San Antonio, with support from Gemini Ink for his poem Song for America V (Yo Soy San Antonio) as one of 30 poems/poets to commemorate the City’s Tricentennial anniversary.

Grace Notes

Suzanne Morris

November 23, 2021

In music scores,
nonessential ornaments

sometimes occurring just before

the principal notes
and printed tinily with a

slash through them

as if to say
Never mind,

this is a nice touch;
however,

not all that important
in case you overlook it.

But to me, grace notes
might be instead

the small blessings in life
that catch you by surprise,

and are often soon forgotten
in favor of larger ones,

like the first tinkling of rain
after a long dry spell

before the real downpour begins

or the plane you didn’t miss–
only just barely– when

rushing home for your
favorite aunt’s funeral,

or the bone you didn’t break,
after all, last night

when your feet got tangled up
in the water hose

and you fell down hard
on the pavement.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, most recently, Aftermath (SFA University Press, 2016). Until recently, her poetry appeared only in her fiction. However, last year she was invited to contribute seven poems to an anthology entitled No Season for Silence - Texas Poets and Pandemic, (Kallisto Gaia Press).

Gratitude of a Different Ilk

Betsy Joseph

November 21, 2021

I cannot speak to what others might do

if pushed unexpectedly by another to the floor

in an apparent life-saving gesture.

When such a bizarre event happened to me,

I sought to regain the breath that had whooshed

from my lungs while wriggling my body

from beneath the weight that held me in place.

Only later did I offer thanks for his intent to protect me

from a danger that was not real.

The fear on his part was genuine.

The setting was an all-faculty lunch with staff

loosely formed in lines much resembling

grade school students waiting turns

at the water fountain after recess.

Then it happened.

A large, empty stainless steel serving dish

slipped from unsteady hands and crashed loudly,

striking the brown tile floor below.

A panicked voice directly behind me screamed “Incoming!”

and all I recall is being upright one moment, flattened the next

with 180 pounds pressing down on me.

It took two colleagues to pull Curt’s body off mine

and another to attend to me in the large space

that had grown quickly and eerily silent. 

No one could have predicted this reverberating crash 

would trigger such response in a fellow professor   

who thirty-one years before, at age twenty,

had entered the war in ‘Nam during the infamous Tet Offensive. 

Instinct has a powerful reflex as I learned that afternoon.

The aftermath of those moments remains both sharp and blurred.

Once checked for injuries, I turned to search for Curt—

but he had escaped the tumult, shaken and embarrassed.

It was a week before I found him in his office.

As he began to apologize for scaring and bruising me,

I reached my hand toward his, strange gratitude welling inside.

An actor in an unrehearsed drama that otherwise benign day,

Curt was attempting to save my life in a setting 

and instant that presented a clear and present danger 

in a mind still racked by trauma and nightmare.

Betsy Joseph enjoyed a long tenure of college teaching with DCCCD. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and her poetry collection, Only So Many Autumns, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2019. Recently she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, published their book Benches, which pairs her haiku with his black and white photography.

Hare and Hart

Chris Ellery

November 18, 2021

“Now, when we sit down to a meal, we thank God, you know, or our idea of God, for having given us this. [Primitive hunters] thanked the animal.” (Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth Ep. 3 – “The First Story Tellers”)

Chasing the 12-point buck

you do not realize

the buck is chasing you. 

You are the intended victim. 

Do not refuse.

Once 

you tied the hind legs of a hare,

and pulling her ears you stretched her neck

to the knife. 

Your own blood rained

on the white fur

  and on your hands.

Now your hounds have bayed the bear. 

Can you feel their teeth?

You have butchered cattle by the thousands. 

Chickens, pigs, sheep, fish—

a host 

of the living given to carnivorous need.

Where is the meat of your feast?

How will you appease

the mother of all things?

Hunter, 

when the stag is bleeding on the forest floor,

when the hart is in your iron sights, 

will you lose your divinity?

Or will you hear your own spirit 

invoking you 

with blessing, tenderness, and thanks?

Chris Ellery is the author of five books of poetry, including Elder Tree, a collection inspired by Celtic mysticism. His poems have appeared recently in Blue Hole, Crosswinds, and The American Journal of Poetry, He is a long-time resident of San Angelo, TX.

Breeze Shakes the Foliage

Thomas Quitzau

November 9, 2021

Breeze shakes the foliage

Foyer flickers like a campfire

Much depends on that far furnace

Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.

Immaterial

Jacob R. Benavides

November 8, 2021

The body

This Body 

Of mine

A body

Of oily smears, painting

The expanse 

Of a body

Of puddles

Shallow

Sandbars

Strangled 

Rusty ripples

Torn open

Bursting with lemony froth

Spewing forth life

Along a bony belly

Coral collar bones

Tracing a translucent chest

Veins, Violet upended

Vibrance resplendent

Thrown down

Out around

This body

The body

Its once hollow sound

Of mine

A precious 

Queer

Body.

Jacob R. Benavides is a poet residing in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is an undergraduate student pursuing English Literary Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi with minors in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Art. Jacob has been published previously in The Windward Review, a South Texas literary journal.

the retired lady at the texas assisted living facility

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

November 7, 2021

far too simple to say thank you 

like a scrap of paper on the floor 

or a sidewalk flower  

pick up what was dropped 

blow the dandelion into wishes 

a thousand times thank you 

she told me 

then she walked away pushing her cane 

and her coke bottle bottom glasses gliding 

her down the hall 

she the small scrap of paper 

she the dandelion blown into wishes 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and four anthologies.  

True Story

Darby Riley

November 6, 2021

I was sweating my losses,

mourning my plight,

fighting the traffic

with my crazy kids,

the planet in turmoil,

its light under a bush.

Then we said let’s relax

at Hui’s Chinese Cuisine,

the Vegetable Delight,

and the fortune cookie

calmly reminded:

“You have so much to be thankful for.”

Darby Riley, a native San Antonian, has been married to Chris Riley since 1971 and they have three grown children and a granddaughter, age 6. He has hosted a monthly poetry writing workshop for over 25 years. He practices law with his son Charles and is active in the local Sierra Club.

Lift Every Voice

Milton Jordan

November 3, 2021

In thanksgiving for Rev. Dr. William Barber and those who joined the march for voting rights from Georgetown to Austin during the 2021 regular session of the Texas Legislature.

We had, some time back we thought, crossed that bridge,

enough skulls cracked, enough bodies bruised,

ample buses burned, sisters and brothers buried,

and rights hard-won soon to be secured.

We’d moved on to folk song summers,

voices and guitars, and an end to the war,

and we marched from door to door to register 

new voters now freed from Jim Crow.

Yesterday’s limitations though snuck back

disguised as necessary order

for protecting political processes 

from invasions of the newly franchised.

Now, 55 years on, new boots march forth

to cross old bridges, their songs of freedom

ringing to confront the children of Jim Crow:

Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring.

Milton Jordan lives with the musician Anne Elton Jordan in Georgetown. His chapbook, The Amberman Poems, is out from Kallisto Gaia Press which also published the anthology. No Season for Silence: Texas Poets and Pandemic, edited by Jordan. Stephen F. Austin State University Press published his collection, What the Rivers Gather, in 2020.