Dang Me

Alan Berecka

April 28, 2024

To paraphrase the great American bard

Roger Miller, Texas politics swings

like a pendulum do. Republicans

in the statehouse two by two.

The few of us who still vote blue

huddle and mutter, remember

the glory days of Lady Bird and LBJ

when weathervanes like Rick Perry

painted their faces blue like Braveheart

in battle to have a chance to survive.

We say to each other, the pendulum

has got to swing back some day,

but it keeps swinging harder

to the right, blasting through 

practical pandemic protocols, 

through reproductive rights, 

through the lives of trans kids

and gay neighbors, out towards 

guns in vending machines,

so far out the bob has vanished

and may have lost its chain

never to return, leaving us

liberals with the faintest hope

couched in country wisdom:

Texas politics swings

like a pendulum do,

don’t it?

Alan Berecka is a retired librarian who currently lives in Sinton, Texas. His poems have appeared in journals such as the Red River Review, Ruminate, The Christian Century and Texas Review. He has published six books of poetry, the latest is Atlas Sighs: Selected and New Poems, Turning Plow Press, 2024.

Something from Nothing

Chris Ellery

April 21, 2024

The arborist is here with his crew, 

pruning and feeding, trying to coax

a few more years from a red oak 

damaged by ice and lightning. 

It will either make it, or it won’t.

That’s what he says, looking at me, 

an old man touching the sky

of my seventieth winter, a mere child 

to the tree, my old friend, wise and good 

at listening, good at gathering birds 

among its limbs to sing in the wind.

I dread to see the chainsaw and the shredder. 

With a past so long—deciduous decades 

of greening and changing—it’s hard 

to imagine my yard without certain things.

Acorns. Owl’s nest. Hatchlings. Shade.

Now the future shows me an emptiness

where nothing will be. Nothing. 

No thing. Yet nothing, I know, 

is something, too—

an opening for light and wind, 

room for something new to grow, 

a space for kids to run and play, 

a point from which 

someone might view at the end of the day 

the glory of the moonrise 

or the setting sun.

Chris Ellery is author of five poetry collections, most recently Canticles of the Body and Elder Tree. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has received the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Dora and Alexander Raynes Prize for Poetry, the Betsy Colquitt Award, and the Texas Poetry Award. 

Today and Tomorrow and Tomorrow . . .

Irene Keller

April 21, 2024

Soap-bubbled water swirls with a force 

that pulls grime from faded jeans; clear

water rinses the thinning strong threads

so ready again to fit perfect the cowgirl 

Wearing cleaned jeans, she travels across

her land of deep cracks, of dry creek beds

she lies on the ground, stares deep into the

pale sky, makes dust angels a plea for rain 

She finds shade with her two sorrel friends

watches birds with singed failing wing tips 

try to stand on a searing water trough edge 

where colorless butterfly wings have dried

Close to her home, traveled black asphalt

smells like burning rubber with no flames

choking earth’s breath, destroying its gifts 

of plenty for the ranch owner and beyond

Nearby city commuters inhale noxious air

urban parks have no children jumping for

floating balloons, no lovers strolling hand                     

in hand, no joggers gliding through nature

On the open dried range, the adrift mother   

located, her nose not close to morning hay 

rather nudging her still born calf, sickened 

cowgirl: knees buckle, angst face in hands

Soapy water swirls once again to wash out 

embedded dust from torn jeans, giving the

cowgirl a scent of fresh rain for tomorrow

yet realizes the sour promise of false hope

Ponders, Some say the world will end in fire 

as she feels the shameless scorching of earth  

that will continue into the night without stars

and the glow of the moon can no longer cool

Irene Keller lives in New Braunfels, Texas. She has had a long, sincere relationship with poetry. Currently, she is a poet who is concerned about the devastating effects of continuously rising temperatures.

A Teacher’s Dream

Thomas Hemminger

April 14, 2024

If I could tell the world my dream

I wouldn’t need any words.

I would simply point to my students

all grown up, and thriving

in the world that is their own.

I would commend the third grader

who once struggled to read

now enrolled in a doctoral program.

I would celebrate the child of divorce

whose fourth child graduated

high school as Salutatorian.

I would applaud the middle schooler

who lived for choir but couldn’t match pitch,

whose own choirs just earned “Sweepstakes.”

I would marvel at the high schooler

who almost dropped out, but is now a

high school guidance counselor.

I would shine the light on the single mother

who finished her high school diploma,

whose children are now entrepreneurs.

If I could tell the world my dream,

I wouldn’t need any words.

I would simply point to my students

all grown up, and thriving

in the world that is their own.

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His work has been published locally in Dallas, as well as in The Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Poetry Catalog. 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.

Calculating My Limits

Milton Jordan

April 14, 2024

I grew up in Houston off of Wayside Drive.  

I Ain’t Living Long Like This, Waylon Jennings  

I spent my better alone moments  

on a crowded city street corner bench

where Lamar crossed Fannin in that silence 

only stalled and honking traffic can create.

I preferred the evening glow of sunset

reflected off windows of multi-storied 

office buildings followed by streetlights 

slowly spreading into view. 

I did not bring my notebook to that corner

nor record thoughts on a not that small

device hanging in my right shoulder bag

to save the scenes that might elude my memory.

I brought the corner back with me after dark, 

pedestrians rushing from those offices,

the couple out for early supper, 

the harried driver late for his.

I ride the much reduced bus service

to that bench and the sun’s shattered setting 

reflected off  broken ninth story windows,

unlit streetlights disappearing in shadow.

I watch the easy flow of light traffic

lament the lack of its steady sound,

the few pedestrians in no rush

passing locked breakfast and lunch only cafes

I received Council’s Houston Tomorrow 

Proclamation: “A New City Center”

accompanied by the artist’s rendition

of smaller buildings and bayou park trails.

I note an absence of financial figures,

the carefully vague undated timeline,

and speculate my own slim chances

of penning poems on Houston Tomorrow.

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