Texas Lists: The B List

 Jim LaVilla-Havelin

May 4, 2025

Begin with 

Big Bend and

             Bluebonnets and

                 Barbecue and

Barb wire

Bastrop, Brownsville, Bandera, and

Bryan, Burnett, Beeville, Bigfoot (cities and towns)

Balmorhea, Blue Hole (springs)

Brackenridge Park

Big Thicket

Bentsen, Beto, lyndon Baines Johnson, and

kay Bailey Hutchison, Bonilla (pols)

Bijou (indie and foreign film cinema in SA, closed now)

Burlingame, Bonazzi, Brown, Browne, and

Boldt, Billings, Blanda, Bigelow, and  

Birkelbach, Burroughs, Bradley, and

Berecka, Barker (poets)

Blanton, Bayou Bend (museums)

Beaumont, Brenham, Boerne, Belton, and

         Burleson, Ballinger, Brackettville (more towns and cities)

Big D, Big Red, Big Thicket, Big Bend (actually, anything

with Big in its name)

Bagwell, Biggio, Bregman, Berkman, and

Bell, Berry, Bogar, Bruntlett, Backe (Astros Killer Bs)

Breakfast Tacos, Big Red, Brisket, Banana Pudding, 

Barbacoa, Barbecue (I used to think,

              when I first moved here, that 

    the last two were the same,

              just different languages -

but no.

Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent, Tales from the Breakaway Republic, a chapbook, was published by Moonstone Press, Philadelphia, in May 2022. LaVilla-Havelin is the Coordinator for National Poetry Month in San Antonio.

Imagined Instructions to a Remaining Mate

Betsy Joseph

May 4, 2025

Next to the tattered dictionary angled on the bookcase shelf,

place the iridescent conch shell we collected on the Cape

the day the storm blew in and the sea waters roiled,

the day we associated cancer with the crabs scurrying on the beach

and not with the mass attached to my lung.

Alongside the sidewalk etched with deep cracks,

the very one our daughters designed with hopscotch lines

and skipped their way through childhood,

stroll in the magical softness of sunrise,

in the quiet of dawn with our neighbor’s Burmese cat

(being sure to wear your wool tweed cap to ward off the chill).

When I am gone and when you feel ready,

on an evening clear with moon and stars,

take from the shelf our favorite, Bailey’s Irish cream,

and toast the golden orb that lit our nighttime chats.

Lastly, my love, meditate on remembrance rather than loss.

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.

Honors

Chris Ellery

May 4, 2025

Even one such as I 

has honors to boast of.

Ticks and mosquitoes 

have esteemed my blood.

Dogs have sniffed 

my nature

and wagged their tails.

Cats have shed 

their fur on my lap 

as they yawned and stretched 

and scratched and purred.

One long-fallen pine

left its sap-rich root

behind for me to find

to kindle my campfire

on a drizzly day

when a black bear stopped

a hundred feet away, 

stood and waved.

And once as I floated 

still as driftwood

on the Mountain Fork River

a gracious dragonfly

hovering above 

my sun-happy self

cast its shadow 

on my bare umbilicus, 

connecting me

briefly

to everything on earth.

Chris Ellery is a long-time and avid supporter of Texas Poetry Assignment and a frequent contributor. He affectionately dedicates this poem, "Honors," to Laurence Musgrove, editor, and to all TPA contributors. In the words of that great adventurer Odysseus, “All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.”

Homecoming Sunday

Milton Jordan

May 4, 2025

Many of us, once called younger folk

now some years and more miles removed,

returned most Mays for worship at ten 

and that annual Dinner-on-the-Grounds

spread across those old concrete tables.

Sallie Anne brought her mother’s famous peach pies;

Marilyn showed up with sweet potatoes,

and Kenny and his brother brought brisket

they’d spent Saturday smoking on the pit

Uncle Clarence built out beyond the tables.

We counted on Irene’s Blackeyes with sausage,

onions and some spice she kept secret,

cornbread in the pans the twins, Janice and John, 

salvaged when they sold their grandparents’ place

and butter their brother James Earl still churned.

Aunt Marge, now living in the Senior Center 

in town, somehow still brought her cheesy grits,

but her nieces, Katherine and Connie

had little success matching her recipe

and Paul’s pan-fried version was always better.

A year or two back we began to notice

absent friends, Steven and his special sauce,

Ray who’d always cranked the ice cream freezers,

Frank since Pattie Dee was gone, but the Baker boys

still led singing before we ate leftovers. 

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

The Right Lexicon

Alan Berecka

May 4, 2025

Not since the age of Johnson

and Webster have lexicons

been met with such excitement

but there’s a twist, modern

list makers don’t hunt words

for inclusion but to ban

from official vocabularies,

as if erasing a phrase

like peanut allergy can relieve

us from the need for EPIPENs 

and air filtration systems 

though affliction and cure remain.

Such confusing lists, written

in venom and arrogance,

forget a newer testament

that teaches us to remember

three kind words to live by

faith, hope and love 

of which love is the greater.

Alan Berecka resides with his wife Alice and an ornery rescue dog named Ophelia in Sinton, Texas  He retired in January from being a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and is settling into a whole new level of contentment. His poetry has appeared in such places as the American Literary Review, Texas Review, and The San Antonio Express. He has authored three chapbooks, and six full collections, the latest of which is Atlas Sighs from Turning Plow Press, 2024. A Living is not a Life: A Working Title (Black Spruce Press, Brooklyn, 2021) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. From 2017 to 2019 he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.