Three Days of Snow in Beaumont, TX

Ulia Trylowsky

February 2, 2025

Day One:

I hoped for snow and here it is.

More than I imagined, heavy and thick.

Like a child, I run down the street,

Kicking white powder with my boots

As the snowflakes hit my face.

This is the best morning ever!

At least for now, at least in the moment

When I want snow.

And what sticks to my lashes,

Reminds me of the winters I loved, 

Growing up in Canada.

Day Two:

The lack of snow-work surprises.

Few white guardians adorn lawns.

It saddens that warm-weather children,

Fail the art of the snowman.

My yard is full –

With family of four, wearing hats,

A snowy red toqued sentinel,

Laughing and laughing at a seated cat,

A dapper bearded gentleman,

Looking on, all happy and fat.

Day Three:

In Edmonton, back home,

The snowmen stand for months.

But here in Beaumont,

My small snow family,

With guards and cat

Died after two days.

Uliana Trylowsky is a transplanted Ukrainian-Canadian who has lived in Southeast Texas for over 25 years.  While she struggled to accustom herself to the unique qualities of the region, she now calls it home and, until the war in Ukraine, found herself to be quite a happy person.

Brown’s Cemetery

Grace Nicholson

January 5, 2025

Fog makes its home within my weary chest,

filling the places emptied from your loss.

The time has come to settle in and rest.

Lungs rattle, rasping against pulling breath,

and I’m drawn for the first time to the cross.

Fog makes its home within my weary chest.

A damp cough trills, the sound infesting all

the house with the green of illness and moss.

The time has come to settle in and rest.

I’m in the very place that I detest,

tracing a stone I had Sam Brown emboss.

Fog makes its home within my weary chest.

I’ve met the day that I must welcome death.

He’ll move in close, my dearest albatross.

The time has come to settle in and rest.

I’m hopeful for a quick, sudden arrest,

so no one has to see my brown eyes gloss.

Fog makes its home within my weary chest.

The time has come to settle in and rest.

Grace Nicholson is a Cajun poet from Deweyville, Texas. Lamar University has previously published her poems in their student literary magazine, Pulse. Grace is a graduate student at Lamar University currently pursuing her Master of the Arts in English degree.

Storm Warning

James Higgins

July 21, 2024

I saw the inside of Aunt Lula Jane’s

storm cellar only once, that time

the huge black clouds blew in 

from the north, scared the locals,

terrified this city boy. People went gingerly

down their cellar stairs though, dirt walled

shelters with tin roofs, air vents

sticking up to catch the incessant

hot wind. Scorpions, even rattlers, sought

the coolness of earthen walls in the heat.

Shelves lined with canned fruits, jams,

vegetables all put up by Aunt Lu, inspired 

by Dustbowl and Depression memories.

Old chairs, a bench, table, bucket

of well water with a dipper in it,

a place to sit ‘til the storm blows over,

hoping to never hear sounds 

of your house splintering 

in freight train winds.

We sat there, my dad, aunt, uncle, 

me maybe a a half hour

before Uncle Luther edged

the heavy slanted door open 

saw clouds, not so dark now,

passing us by, headed southwest

toward Sweetwater, Shep, maybe

Buffalo Gap or Muleshoe

making other people in little Texas towns 

watch the sky in fear, seek shelter

in a backyard hole in the ground.

Born in Abilene, James Higgins spent the first fifteen years of his life in Texas, living in San Antonio during the school year, then spending most summers with his dad in the little town of Merkel, where both his parents were born. Two different worlds, city life vs. small town.

The Fourth of July

Milton Jordan

July 14, 2024

Out earlier, under the sun’s lower angle,

along our small tributary stream 

feeding the North Gabriel’s slower flow

we sit, just before midday, at our fifth floor

window and wonder at the lack of wisdom 

that leads the Sheriff's Mounted Posse 

to schedule again its Independence Day

parade and three high school bands, a number

of civic clubs and politicians to march

past the canopied courthouse judge’s stand

through the haze of triple digit heat. 

along asphalt Eighth Street beneath us,

and how thirty or so high-schoolers

will survive their Legion double hitter.  

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

Sunday Thunderstorm

Betsy Joseph

June 30, 2024

I had just begun a quilt-patterned sleep

with colors of canyons both muted and deep

with images comforting, then impossible to keep.

Sudden pounding of rain altered the somnolent beat,

concluding my dearly coveted peace

so early this gray June morning.

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 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.

Like a Palm in a Hurricane

Kathryn Jones

June 30, 2024

The wind screamed like the Furies 

coming to seek vengeance, 

murdering with a swirling sword,

devouring and regurgitating

pieces of roofs, walls, windows,

proclaiming that life will break you. 

Even trees gave up their roots

except for the palms that bent 

and bowed to the wind,

roots clinging to soil, refusing to break.  

Hiding in my closet, I silently screamed too,

plugging my ears against the shrieking sky

until silence landed with a thud

like the ebony tree on our roof.

I opened the door, peeked outside to see

walls crumbled, glass shattered, 

trees uprooted – except for the palm, 

beaten but still standing, showing me 

to bend the knee of my heart, bow, 

cling to life, and never, ever break. 

Kathryn Jones is a poet, journalist, and essayist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, and the Texas Observer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including TexasPoetryAssignment.com, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose (Dos Gatos Press, 2023), Lone Star Poetry (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2023), and in her chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life, published by Finishing Line Press. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016 and lives on a ranch near Glen Rose, Texas.

Snowpocalypse: February 2021

Jeffrey L. Taylor

June 9, 2024

Prediction is really hard,
especially about the future.
— Yogi Berra

Today it is sunny with highs
predicted in the low 80s.  A week
from today, the predicted low
is the low 20s.  It will actually be
the low single digits.
Texas is not prepared for
an International Falls, Minnesota
winter.

Weather prediction is based
on the past, which is rapidly
changing in the rearview mirror.
Can scientists predict the direction
of climate change accurately enough
to track the New Normal?

The last 400 years’ temperature rise
is not unprecedented.  It’s happened before,
but over ten thousand years.  Accurately predicting
what has not happened before will require
numerous mid-course corrections.

Jeffrey L. Taylor is a retired Software Engineer.  Around 1990, poems started holding his sleep hostage.  He has been published in The Perch, California Quarterly, Texas Poetry Calendar, and Texas Poetry Assignment.

Steep Learning Curve

Milton Jordan

June 2, 2024

Freshly certified and newly appointed,

our residential administrator, 

who admittedly had limited  

history with Central Texas, determined

soon after her October arrival

to dig a pond in a weedy space 

just beyond two rows of visitor parking 

fronting our senior living west entrance.

An unusually wet winter and early spring

prompted her to install a twirling fountain

mid-water, with multi-colored lighting

attracting much attention and providing

new front photos for the resident

directory and corporate sales brochures.

Rainfall slowed late April and by July’s end

summer had returned dry and dusty

steadily dropping the water level

below the twirling fountain’s intake valve,

exposing its misshapen concrete base

and a few September sludge puddles.  

November’s limited recovery held

through February but summer’s drought

returned early, left the pond near dry

by mid-May and a pond-bottom covering 

the contractors guaranteed to maintain 

adequate water levels proved by August

their Central Texas experience

as shallow as our administrator’s.

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