Texas Jesus
Texas Jesus
Herman Sutter
January 4, 2026
(for the workers at Casa Juan Diego)
walks across borders
bootless and bare
footed, face brown as leather,
He walks from Brownsville to
Amarillo on bruised heels
and blistering toes,
carrying with Him
His only tools: rough
hands and a will to walk,
El Paso to Beaumont, leaving
footprints everywhere.
Have you seen Him?
Feet still wet from the Rio,
still bloody from the barbed wire and scrub
brush of Laredo, the barren
emptiness beyond Eagle Pass.
Have you seen Him
standing at the corner
Long Point and Pech
waiting for lights to change,
waiting for cars to pass
wondering: What happened
to the Kmart? And waiting
for someone to stop
and say: Are you
okay? I saw Him once
holding a sign, asking
for work, asking for
food, asking for change.
What will you dare
when you find out
all this time He’s
been standing there
waiting? What will you do
when you find out
everywhere He went
He was always
looking for you.
Why are you still reading this?
He’s waiting.
Go.
Herman Sutter (award-winning poet/playwright/essayist) is the author of two chapbooks: Stations (Wiseblood Books), and The World Before Grace (Wings Press), as well as “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” St. Anthony Messenger. His work appears in: The Perch, The Ekphrastic Review, The Langdon Review, Touchstone, The Merton Journal, as well as: Texas Poetry Calendar (2021) & By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville Press, 2019). His recent manuscript A Theology of Need was long listed for the Sexton prize.
Conditioned
Suzanne Morris
December 7, 2025
We are all struck dumb
when the woman bursts through
the tall entryway of the nave
during Sunday worship.
Well past fifty, by the looks of her,
she wears a bright yellow tank top
and a skirt so short it barely
conceals her buttocks
revealing a pair of deeply tanned
arms and shapely legs, and
accentuating her full head of
champagne-blond tinted hair.
She stalks all the way up a side aisle
to the door at the foot of the chancel,
assailing us for locking her out.
Jesus sure isn’t here, she swears.
Then she is gone,
leaving us breathless,
the air still charged
with her anger.
Soon after worship resumes,
someone asks that we
pray for the woman.
We bow our heads.
During coffee hour, we discover
the gut reaction shared among
most who were present
during the episode:
Oh my God, what if
she has a gun?
Before becoming a poet, Suzanne Morris was a novelist, with eight published works between 1976 and 2016. Many of her early poems were featured in her fiction, to advance the underlying themes. Since 2020, she has contributed poems to several anthologies, and has been published at a variety of online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment. A native Houstonian, Ms. Morris has resided in Cherokee County for 17 years.
A Friend in Jesus
Alan Berecka
December 7, 2025
A chronic altar boy as a child, Jesus
was an abstraction whipped up by priests
on Sunday mornings. Recipe as follows:
start with wine, add a drop of water,
elevate a host of wafer-thin bread,
fold in an incantation or two, smoke
can be added for special occasions,
don’t forget a sprinkling of synchronized bells.
Say Amen and let those pure enough to partake
line up and kneel at a railing to offer their tongues.
My wife knew a more personable Jesus.
Taught our kids songs like “Jesus loves me
this I know because the Bible tells me so.”
One day after a long day at work,
I walked into our living room and found
our son playing on a Play Station
a generation or two newer than ours.
I asked him, “Where did that come from?”
He replied, “Jesus gave it to me.”
So I said, Son, I’m not in the mood-
stop being a wise-ass and answer me.”
He finally paused his game, looked up
and repeated, “ Dad, really, Jesus says
he got a newer one, and he’s okay with me
using this one for as long as I want.”
“What?” “Dad, he’s a friend from band.”
I thought I began to understand, so I
said, “Son, it’s pronounced Hey-Zeus.”
“No, dad, really, he goes by Jesus.”
At which point my wife appeared
in way too good of humor and verified
the story by saying, “Yep, Jesus Reyes,
he’s a great kid and a real hoot.”
Tired and feeling defeated yet again
I trudged off, lugging my inability
to imagine any Jesus I could know.
Alan Berecka, according to Microsoft’s Copilot, is an acclaimed American poet whose work deftly blends humor, storytelling, and insight into everyday life. Hailing from rural New York and residing near Corpus Christi, Texas, Berecka is a retired librarian and the author of several poetry collections, including “Atlas Sighs: New and Selected Poems.” His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including the American Literary Review. Currently, he is a regular contributor to the Texas Poetry Assignment and was included in Lamar University Press’s poetry anthology Southern Voices. From 2017 to 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi. Lastly, Berecka is not a huge believer in artificial intelligence, believing its findings often tend toward grandiosity.
Transfiguration upon a Dark Day
Chris Ellery
December 7, 2025
When somebody comes up
and out from the basement
and feels the first drop of rain
on the shoulder of grievance—
when somebody hears,
for once, the elemental life
singing in the desolation
of hardscrabble thorn and willow—
when somebody sees,
though seeing seems too much,
the withered, uncut grasses
waving in a field along the arroyo,
where something is pouring
into the gray pelt of the day
unexpected
as the strobe of a new-born star
beaming with the mind of every dawn
to a muddy ditch
held in a hollow
of bent weeds, broken scrub, and trash—
then instantly
in the flare of one real moment,
ignorance and fear loose their hold,
and love becomes the seed that ever is
and the architect of every action,
simple as saying yes to beauty,
beauty that is not this, not this,
nor this.
Chris Ellery is the author of six collections of poetry, including Canticles of the Body, an extended meditation that merges kundalini yoga and the Christian liturgical cycle. He is a member of the Fulbright Alumni Association and the Texas Institute of Letters.
Will You Be Like Him?
Thomas Hemminger
December 7, 2025
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, 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.
Nazareth
Milton Jordan
December 7, 2025
The preacher set his Thursday pulpit
on the corner opposite the waitress
staring midmorning through her window
lettered Open Daily Until Three
where two roads going nowhere much larger
cross beneath a light blinking stop both ways
slowing a driver enough to notice
the preacher begin his weekly theme,
You have forgotten why your grandfathers
named our town. You have forgotten Jesus.
and the waitress waiting at her window
for a few of the preacher’s listeners
to cross the street for pie and coffee,
the driver for directions and early lunch.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.
some nameless god
d. ellis phelps
December 7, 2025
when i think of jesus
i think of sitting on a cold curb
a couple of days sober
bright night sky above
at the meeting they’d said
the way to stay sober was
to turn my life over
to god
when i think of staying sober
i think of shaking and waking
fear screaming me out of half-sleep
no sleep and craving craving
chain smoking and learning to love
coffee more than dope
& how i did not know
how to pray
when i think of prayer
i think of Sunday mornings
at the first southern baptist church
choir practice me a child
singing for my soul
how i believed the stories
i was told
when i think of stories
i think of abraham and his son issac
how abraham was willing
to sacrifice his only son to prove
his fear of the lord
how nuts is that
what kind of god
would ask this of a man
when i think of men—their stories
and gods and jesus
i am a gyroscope off its axis
how can a god with a penchant
for sacrificing only sons be trusted
what kind of maniac recorded this
as gospel and called it
the greatest story ever told
what kind of man would teach this
absolute obedience
to a child
when i think of a child
i think of the manger
in which it is said
the christ was born
how the world rejoiced
they say
how he’d come to save us
when i think of being saved
i think of that cold curb
how i prayed
how i stayed
sober
some nameless god
must have heard me
d. ellis phelps is the author of five poetry collections with the most recent being book of common breath (Kelsay Books, forthcoming 2026) and one novel, Making Room for George. She is the founding editor of fws: international journal of literature & art where she enjoys publishing the work of her contemporaries.
Texas Jesus
Jim LaVilla-Havelin
December 7, 2025
After ICE had rounded up and deported all the Angels,
many Marias and a couple of Cristos,
they decided to park themselves outside all iglesias
and pick off each Jesus as he left the building:
carpenters, janitors, farm workers,
city and state government workers,
restaurant employees, poets, artists,
mostly all legal
and here now
many for over
twenty years
sent off to Sudan or Central America
even to Ukraine, Gaza, Egypt
and when the dust cleared ICE went into the iglesias
and pried the last Jesus
off the cross
slapped the wooden savior into the smoker
Jesus barbecue -
a Texas treat!
Procession (Anathema Maranatha)
Seth Wieck
December 7, 2025
Route 66 / Interstate 40, Groom, Texas, pop. 549
Once or twice each March and April, this mist
marches into the roadside town of Groom
where stands in steel the nineteen-story
monument: Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
On usual clear plain days, the cross looms—
a white obelisk with an obelisk beam—
against a sky the painters call bice blue.
For nearly thirty years, one saw it first
driving West—the long shadow dialing East
like a Roman clock. America’s mother
road prostrate below the corpseless cross, alone.
The level grasslands stretched far away.
For the last three years, a legion of windmill
turbines laid siege on the plain. Each stands head
and shoulders above the Cross of Our Lord and Groom.
It’s not hard to see displayed on those three blades
a hand and second hand and pierced feet, spinning.
Hundreds of windmills like thorns round the horizon
have crowned our ground and ground our everliving wind.
More gruesome than Romans we’ve machined
crucifixes where sorrow and blood don’t
flow mingled down but out, out, out.
Once or twice each April Groom appears out of the mist.
From the sconce of fog, the sun’s trimmed lamp glows through
this gloom and isolates the town’s long interstate view.
Each blade ascends and vanishes into
the brow of clouds then falls, plunging mist down
on the dead land with a long, low whoosh of wind
then rises, rises, rises and is received again.
Seth Wieck lives in Amarillo with his wife and three children. He currently serves as a contributing editor at Front Porch Republic, and on the board of the Center for the Study of the American West. Call Out Coyote, his debut collection of poetry, will be published by Wiseblood Books in 2026.
a texan’s response to the parable of the sower
Sister Lou Ella Hickman
December 7, 2025
luke 8:5-8, matthew 13:1-23, mark 4:1-20
You often taught the crowds with parables—
one so simple:
the birds of the air are fed
see how the lilies grow
another a farmer’s tale:
a sower went out to sow . . .
who scattered seed on the path
but the birds came and ate them up . . .
here in south texas
the mesquite is known for its rugged, knotted wood
and long, thin seed pods
that nourish cattle as well as birds . . .
this knotted tree is a scrappy one
where birds come to nest
rest in its branches
or feast in its shade
which sounds like another story You once told
about another scrappy tree in a field
after their fill the birds will leave
scattering their deposit a treasure of seeds
across this land’s semi-arid ground . . .
in time this treasure will grow
nourishing again a hundred-fold
like Your own rugged words
Author’s note. Thanks to the birds of the air, we have eight mesquite trees growing on our convent property. Mesquite is also well known as one of the favored choices of firewood for barbecues. For 29 years, the city of Mesquite, Texas has been honored as a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation.
Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writing appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first published book of poetry is entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53, 2015) and her second, Writing the Stars (Press 53, 2024.) She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020.