Shamrocks and Sagebrush

Milton Jordan

April 6, 2025

Out south where Main narrowed onto Gulf prairie,

at that time well beyond development’s reach, 

he built a monument to himself, eighteen floors 

sheathed in limestone, replaced the prairie grass 

with lavish landscaping surrounding the world’s 

most spacious pool and a crescent of cabanas

available to limited clientele; 

no amount of warning from downtown interests 

nor his own accountants preventing

his spending too many of those dollars

now gushing up from his Gulf coast leases

to fill, for a time, his pockets and his ego.

Many years removed and more miles farther west

two of his successors, each dreaming himself 

a modern day Jett Rink. harvested 

gushers of their own, pumped a few pools 

of that harvest into the pockets 

of purchased politicians enabling 

their monuments sheathed with a thin religious

facade to cover selfish intentions, 

set about deconstructing public

education by claiming parental choice

and reaping the windfall public funds  

state issued vouchers would provide.

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

Texas Red-eyed Dragons

Irene Keller

April 6, 2025

Reigning political voices, like ancient red-eyed dragons,

     shoot flames from cavernous mouths; their fiery control ravages 

           those who dare to offer different thoughts or question their wrath.

After their flames burn through deserved human rights: 

     body autonomy, health security, gun constraints, enough water,  

          natural energy; my singed, fighting spirit must return home to heal. 

When home, cool water once more soothes my scars,

     favored varied colored threads mend my fragmented strength, 

          regained courage determined to extinguish more red-eyed flames.   

But first, my damaged self needs to be with its trusted friend                                       

     a live oak that reminds me, “I have hundred year old roots that

          have survived such searing times. Today’s hatred will destroy itself.”

Again, I lean against the live oak and listen for more wisdom: 

     “For now, share your colored threads with others, smooth balm 

          on their wounds; together push crazed dragons back into dark caves.”

As I walk away from my old friend, her leaves awake 

     to murmur, “Hate is swallowed by the oxygen we breathe, 

          sent into clouds that will create rain to cleanse the smoldering ash.”

Irene Keller, Ph.D. In the past, she received accolades for teaching, indicating dedication to her profession and to her students. Past or present, she has always had poetry in her life: past she taught poetry; present she writes poetry.  Some of her poems have appeared in Texas Poetry Assignment, The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging, Texas Poetry Calendar, and the winner of the 2024 Austin Poetry Society contest. 

Not an Oligarch

Thomas Hemminger

April 6, 2025

Oligarchs are rich.

I want to be rich, but

I don’t want to be an oligarch. 

I know that much. 

Oligarchs have wealth, and

Wealth is just made up. 

“You can’t take it with you, 

Brother Will, Brother John.”

The only thing immortal in humanity

Is that which we can share. 

If it’s ever worth holding on to, 

It’s worth far more passed along.

Give me wealth in friendship. 

Shower me with riches of the heart. 

Lavish me with moments of service.

Bury me with nothing but love. 

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, The 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. 

What fruit will fall from this tree

Herman Sutter

April 6, 2025

The sanctity of office

is only found

in ownership

and who it is

who owns the ship

of state. Governor

Abbot has forgotten

he is not

the office, not the state,

and not a profit

able servant

when he assumes

his own decrees

are signs of his own

ership and of his own

sanctity.

Herman Sutter (award-winning poet/playwright/essayist) is the author of Stations (Wiseblood Books), The World Before Grace (Wings Press), and “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” St. Anthony Messenger. His work appears in The Perch (Yale University), The Ekphrastic Review, The Langdon Review, Touchstone, i.e., 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.

Interview With a Texas Oligarch

Vincent Hostak

April 6, 2025

Because I could not understand why

he is-the-way-he-is,

I asked him to tell me the story as if I were a child:

in a breathless fairytale.

As a child did you wander through the streets of Big Spring

on forever starless nights and

in perpetual absence of the moon?

Could you not see the movements of your own hands?

Did they make wealth by careful destruction and

was it better that you could not see their workings--

like the labor of drills in the earth’s black belly

splitting fine-grained shale, 

releasing inky fountains?

When your rich reserves grew as great 

as the swollen Basin’s

and you built your private school and your president,

were you blind to your stride 

over every dividing line?

Did you creep like sand under a horse-breaker’s fence?

Could you see oil seeping into Midland’s water and

were you reminded of weekends at the beach,

the strange swirls on an abalone shell?

You ask too many questions, he said.  

It’s far simpler in one-breath.

I want to be the most influential unit of power in the machine.

I want to be the bit of God’s drill.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.

Flooding The Zone

Suzanne Morris

April 6, 2025

Bad news is flooding the zone

all day long

workers fired without cause

or health insurance

federal funds appropriated

by Congress, by fiat

abruptly withdrawn

Alliances revered

for eighty years

sold out in 

less than ninety days

along with vaccine 

mandates, USAID, DOE

and our pledge to

stand by Ukraine.

Flanked by his court

of oligarch jesters

our President 

crowns himself King

and I can’t sleep nights

from bouts of worrying.

But then one evening on TCM,

Cagney playing George M. Cohan

struts across Broadway 

tap-dancing feet scarcely

touching the stage

as flutes, trombones,

and trumpets play

my feet keeping time

my heart on the rise:

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

a Yankee Doodle do or die

a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s

born on the Fourth of July...

American flags snapping to the rhythm

on both sides and behind, and

sunny skies cheering in the wings.

The patriotic zeal of him

the never give up or give in of him

floods  my zone with hope again as I

turn off the TV and dance to bed:

let the unabashed fervor

of George M. Cohan

fill the Yankee Doodle Dandies

now protesting so we 

never give up, never give in

‘til the country we believe in

is born again. 

Amen, brothers and sisters.  Amen! 

A native of Houston, Suzanne Morris has made her home in East Texas for nearly two decades.  Her poems have appeared in anthologies as well as online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pine Cone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.