On the Edge of the East Texas Field

Milton Jordan

July 6, 2025

We worked shares at the time, Daddy and my 

uncles, living along a graveled road,

two houses and two rooms attached to our 

one garage for uncle Clarence, now alone.

Evenings in uncle Doc’s larger kitchen

depending on two coal oil lamps the adults

spoke in muted voices of derricks rising

into view above the ridge to our east,

and if we might be due shares of a gusher

on the acres they’d farmed for fifteen years.

But bankers controlled that land west

of the ridge, held paper on everything

Daddy and Doc owned, and limited shares

to returns from cotton and corn.

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