What It’s Like Here Poems
The Webbed Ways
Sumera Saleem
May 1, 2021
“The body of fly paints what freedom is,” says the sane.
My wings wired in space and speed,
No buzzing business.
A move through thousands of particles,
Hanging in the air, heavy with carbon breaths,
Though my multiple legs of reality are always
Trapped in a fantastic spider web,
Whose artistic divinity, non-divinity
Design the algorithms, ends and beginnings
For all of us who desire to fly.
Fly when you feel to.
Ends and beginnings, accidents or fate.
For some these are mysteries, and I read these
As the magic of the universe,
Spelled on paper walls where words disappear
When you set your vision globe to read the future with a logic wand,
The dew drops from which meanings roll down on the floor like dice
Who will pick them when my own tiny body is caught
In an altitude of vision, ensnared in a slender film of senses?
Fly when you have to.
You can see here the captured prisoners
Who chased change and followed curiosity as their leader.
If being ensnared is the end of curiosity,
Don’t follow any fly with fire or fame.
Both will arrest you in the worries webbed in silvery shreds
Keep a glow not fire in you,
To spin the soul and resist the grave-curtains of my spider web.
Fly if you still can.
Sumera Saleem is a lecturer in the department of English language and literature, Sargodha University, Sargodha and gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab for the session 2013-15. Her poems have appeared in Tejascovido, Langdon Review published by Tarleton State University, USA, Blue Minaret, Lit Sphere, Surrey Library UK, The Text Journal, The Ghazal Page, Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters, Word Magazine. A few more are forthcoming in international and national anthologies.
The Mermaloids’ Lament
Juan Manuel Pérez
April 28, 2021
from oceans we came
when dry land was yet to be
when legs were fable
then we crawled on out
evolving from fins to limbs
taking steps away
before history
before the reed met the clay
when thoughts said it all
then to quill and ink
to write salty tales of old
of time out of place
forgot our purpose
we, descendants from the drink
all near washed away
now to screens and text
far from the call of the deep
far from once we were
war, we learned it well
cutting limbs away for peace
crawling back to sea
Juan Manuel Pérez, a Mexican-American poet of indigenous descent and the 2019-2020 Poet Laureate for Corpus Christi, Texas, is the author of several books of poetry, including two new books, SPACE IN PIECES (2020) and SCREW THE WALL! AND OTHER BROWN PEOPLE POEMS (2020).
I and I and I am
Marilyn Robitaille
April 4, 2021
For T. Wayne Schwertner, Purveyor of Duck Eggs
Marilyn Robitaille is Associate Professor of English at Tarleton State University, a member of the Texas A & M System. She is founding co-editor of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. Her book of illustrated poetry Not by Design: 50 Poems and Images (2018) has been featured in gallery readings with samplings of the original art exhibited. Her work has been included in a variety of poetry anthologies. She is the founder of Romar Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing works that embrace the power of artistic expression, touch the heart, and keep us civilized.
10.3 Seconds
Antoinette Winstead
March 21, 2021
Jesse Owens’s 100m victory at the 1936 Olympics on
August 3, 1936 in Berlin, Germany
Channeling his energy,
we move in sync —
me, the white spikes
on the black feet
of a descendent of slavery.
We glide past the others,
pumping effortlessly,
nothing before us
but the finish line and glory.
In 10.3 seconds,
together we make history,
putting to rest forever —
the myth of Aryan superiority,
as the perpetrator of the lie
looks on in ignominy
while we lap the stadium
of 100,000 who cheer unabashedly
a black, gold-winning Olympian.
Antoinette F. Winstead, a poet, playwright, director, and actor, teaches film and theater courses at Our Lady of the Lake University where she serves as the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Program Head for the Mass Communication and Drama programs. Her poetry has been published in TejasCovido, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Voice de la Luna, Jerry Jazz Musician, and The Woman Inc.
The Fallow Loam Laments
Jesse Doiron
March 18, 2021
Could not the ploughman
spare one more fallow year
before I lift the heavy crop
he loves to blade into me?
Then, perhaps, the grass,
that overwhelmed the May,
would hold my land again
and while the days unplanned
long after clover comes.
God knows, I never laughed
so much as last July,
when queens in cups hiccoughed
upon my northmost field
and sleekit mice played meek
beneath the blossomed lace.
Why, even night seemed warm
all the fall that followed,
with fiery boyish flies
yet seeking after maids.
And in the wee November light,
near winter’s winking eye,
the ploughman’s bairn
took his young lass to me.
Could not the son tell father now
the need I have to wait?
Good husbandman, if only
loam had voice and such
to speak, I’d beg you please:
Leave me but one more spring
to rest, untilled again,
and I will swear the barley
in my soil, next year, to love.
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.
Murmuration
Kathryn Jones
March 14, 2021
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 (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.
Perseverance
Kathryn Jones
March 10, 2021
Landing with a sound that no one heard
in Jazero Crater, ancient lake turned to dust,
planet named for the Roman god of war
because it looked red, like blood spilled
by slaughtering armies. Myths said Mars
drove his chariot of fire across the cosmos,
pulled by horse-moons Phobos and Deimos,
meaning fear and panic. Yet I see only two orbs,
small like asteroids, rough and irregular,
not fearful at all. I wander among dunes, craters,
cliffs as Perseverance, a French word drawn
from Latin, perseverare, the root severus,
meaning severe. I am designed to overcome,
to search for life on this severe planet connected
to Earth by the sun’s rays and Bowie’s question.
I am the seeker, deployed by humans who want to know
if there is life on Mars, if they are alone. They live
with five billion others and still feel alone. It is
their nature to search, to yearn. I am the chariot
now on this bloodless planet. The sun sets here
in blueness with no moonlight. I search for words
to explain in human terms. Solus. Silence. Solace.
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 (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.
The Strangest Fire
Vincent Hostak
March 7, 2021
from the ancient lava flow of the Malpais Valley of Fires Carrizozo, NM
I was once the strangest fire:
the strain of all the states of things
expelled from a dark and earthy core,
conspiring with wind and gravity
to crawl into this valley.
Fire to sand and sand to glass-
I wove this pale escarpment,
colored it with burning blossoms,
consumed the yucca to its roots, then
sealed their channels in the loam.
Gas to plasma, plasma to fire-
Magma like a swollen sea
pursuing hardened ammonites:
unwinding all their tortured curls
released as silt to bottom lands.
Fine is the ash of a bobcat’s bones,
the blackened scales of diamondbacks,
the shards of bowls and pit-house walls
layered beneath these ropey flows--
my rigid shell on the bottom lands.
Clarify! Reveal if you feel you must.
My shape wanders, willingly,
like nearby dunes, but slower now.
In my stupor I am not numb, but
I prefer the mystery of dust.
Lest you think I’ve settled here
into the many scars I scored, know
I rest with one eye to the world,
Praising heat, the scalding breeze
that moves the mantle near.
Vincent Hostak is a poet, essayist, and advocate. Long a resident of Texas, he resides in the intersection of city and wilderness near Denver. His poetry is published in Sonder Midwest (#5), Tejascovido.com, the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Wild, Abandoned (the blog). His podcast on refugee resettlement & culture: https://anchor.fm/crossingsrefugees.
Lunar Flag
Thomas Quitzau
March 4, 2021
b. 1969—
Attempts to hang me, beauteous lover,
Have succeeded: fifty-one brutal years.
After counting stars, I’m starting over
Slung like a scarecrow and left to die here.
It’s easier this way, alone, recluse
Planted in ashen rocks broken by slave
Meteors pulled into this vacant loose
Atmosphere like baked dirty cotton waves.
If that mirror-faced white pudgy farmer’s
Segregated cultivated good will
Don’t kill me, the blue minié ball charmer’s
Penetrant spinning vacillations will.
Red and blue have left my wrinkled white face
Cosmically decayed through pitch-black space.
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.
Witnessing the Lynching, from the Sky’s Diary
Loretta Diane Walker
March 1, 2021
“Negro Is Slain By Texas Posse: Victim's Heart Removed After His Capture By Armed Men" was published in The New York World Telegram on December 8, 1933.
Account 1: Sky
Curses of the first born,
the archivist of the all-in-all,
the receptacle of every act
and uttered secret.
Born before time itself,
I am predicated to witness
hobbies of cruelty
based on certain men
worshiping the pigmented temple
of their skin.
Longevity is cruel.
I can never unremember
blood dripping through history
from frenzied clubs,
lust filled blades
for the taste of a negro’s plasma
and the long drop
and snap of a black life.
Account 2: Justice
Fashioned with fair hands
to hold sword and scales,
balance morality, I am ignored.
Guilt, innocence tastes the same
on hate’s singed tongue.
Truth is a nuisance,
accusations kindle for fires
to destroy what is different.
I am a blind amputated woman.
Account 3: The Rope
Beneath a jungle of stars,
I cradle an innocent neck.
A venomous mob stings
The darkness with their disdain.
Death knots a century of screams
beneath the moon’s weeping white eye.
Loretta Diane Walker, an award-winning poet, multiple Pushcart Nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry, for her collection, In This House (Bluelight Press). Loretta is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, India, Ireland, and the UK. She has published five collections of poetry. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She teaches elementary music at Reagan Magnet School, Odessa, Texas.