Three Words

Kathryn Jones

January 4, 2026

Remember these three words, 

the neurologist tells us:

Mirror. Tulip. Baseball.

I repeat them in my mind, 

commit them to memory.

A thing that reflects what

we look like, not who we are.

An early spring flower. 

An all-American sport. 

My husband nods and

repeats the words aloud: 

Mirror. Tulip. Baseball. 

More questions for the memory test: 

Day of the week? Month? Year? 

He gets the first two right. 

Then simple instructions: 

Draw a clock with numbers. 

Copy some geometric figures. 

Then the three words come up again. 

Do you remember them, the doctor asks.

Blank stare. A long pause. 

I don’t know, my husband replies. 

I want to shout them:

Mirror! Tulip! Baseball!

Months later, he doesn’t remember 

the day of the week, month, or year.

He doesn’t remember what we did

yesterday, what we talked about today,

what we had planned for tomorrow.

I try to help him remember 

even though it cuts us both inside.

Yes, we are married. Yes, I live here. 

Yes, I will stay and take care of you

because I know who you are and were.

I will remember for both of us.

Mirror. Tulip. Baseball.

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), The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging  (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024); and in her chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and the forthcoming collection The Solace of Wild Places (Lamar University Literary Press, 2025). She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016 and lives on a ranch near Glen Rose, Texas.

For a Neches River Poet

Milton Jordan

December 7, 2025

How'd I end up an octogenarian

spending more time at health care clinics

than at this near abandoned writing desk,

and why are my best friends testing

routes into or around tomorrow? 

And why, tracking my route toward ninety,

does it seem crucial to stay at this desk,

and they, some younger, stay longer at theirs?

If urologists and oncologists 

speak confidently of our health

and psychologists think they know our mind,

and cannot wait to explain us to ourselves,

what do poets know of lives lived or looming

and how shall we show them to others?

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

Through the Glass

Stefan Sencerz

December 7, 2025

When I was going into the mountains, my friend the drummer told me what happened when he was a child. His little pet parrot escaped from a cage where she lived her entire life only to get smashed against the first window glass she encountered. She was thrashing there, hitting it over and over and over again until she dropped on the floor, all broken. It was hard to think about it without sadness, he said. It was hard to think about it without anger.

I was sitting with it six days on my meditation cushion trying to pay attention. Each day pain in my knees, pain in my back, pain penetrating my whole body. The teacher kept rejecting each and every answer that seemed even remotely plausible. Over and over and over again. Until I stopped thinking.

I spent almost the entire last night on my mat doing zazen. Still, nothing happened.

Then, on the seventh morning, something thawed. The sky was blue; the clouds were white. The foliage of autumn leaves was spread like brocade over the valley. I was on the top of the world dancing.

I returned home.

My baby son was ill in the hospital. Tubes were sticking out from his arms and torso. I was watching him through the glass, not able to do anything.

I tried to chant. Every sutra, every dharani, every mantra I know. Still nothing!

Smashed against the window glass, I tried to pay attention. It was difficult…  

leaves fall on leaves …

a stray kitten on the stairs

purrs her mantra

Stefan Sencerz, born in in Warsaw, Poland, came to the United States to study philosophy and Zen Buddhism. He teaches philosophy, Western and Eastern, at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. His essays appeared in professional philosophy journals (mostly in the areas of animal ethics and metaethics) and his poems and short stories appeared in literary journals. Stefan has been active on the spoken-word scene winning the slam-masters poetry slam in conjunction with the National Poetry Slam in Madison Wisconsin, in 2008, as well as several poetry slams in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Chicago.

for elizabeth before surgery at m.d. anderson

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

November 2, 2025

you

feeling small with fear . . .

a glow of sun hidden

yet shimmers on the water of waiting . . .

you the poet

will write

as you slowly let your body

voice the elusive

with words you are longing for

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.  

While she gets an MRI

Herman Sutter

November 2, 2025

I sit waiting 

to hear whether she will die 

today 

or a month from now

and there is nothing

to be done 

except wait

in a hard chair

next to an empty one

my butt already tingling 

my back already sore

somewhere beyond the silence

of that door

in a large white tube 

my wife is being ground down 

into bits and bytes

until she is nothing

but a digital report 

on a doctor’s desk

waiting

But aren’t we all waiting

averted eyes empty nods waiting 

just to see:

What will become of me?

All of us here 

waiting

Come      I saved you a chair

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.