coming home

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

August 2, 2026

sometimes during sleep

my dreammaker leads me 

back

home  

back to the house

a hundred acres of land . . .

pasture   windmill    barn

yet

there is also absence 

no people   no family

no cows with their cud or calf

no white face bull with his froth of forehead curls

not even willie our black angus

struggling to slip through a neighbor’s barbed wire fence

absence   perhaps that is their unseen question

under this longing called dreams

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS writings appear in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015, entitled she: robed and wordless, and her second, Writing the Stars, on October 4, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2020. and a Best of the New in 2026. 

Froggy’s Café

Ken Davis

August 2, 2026

Vaqueros, cowboys wielding their rust-laden blades

As if they were scalpels carve the cattle

Into entrees for their rich ranchero patrones

While they subsist on the “trash meat” of tongue, guts, and diaphragm

Immersed in a softening broth of plums, cactus, and sage

Gestating over a mesquite fire until they are born

As fajitas.

Speed up to Froggy’s Café in the fifties where my Uncle

Doo-Dad takes the same “trash meat” as the vaqueros,

Rolls it in the thick bready dough

Tosses them into the crackling deep-fry basket

From which they will emerge as “steak fingers.”

Aunt Fronie presides over the sibilant grill

Cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth

Swearing and sweating as she sculpts the hissing patties

And flips them into the waiting nest of bun

Grease oozing and sizzling

I contemplate my youthful dilemma

Of choosing the squish of the burger

Or the crunch of the fingers

As Elvis wails Jail House Rock

From the nickel-a-play juke box.

Ken Davis is a lifelong Texan, born in San Angelo, lived all over Texas, and graduated from Tascosa High in Amarillo, UT Austin, and UT Medical Branch Galveston. He practiced family medicine in Conroe for 40+ years and is now part-time faculty in a medical training program.