Stavros: A Good Shepherd

Betsy Joseph

June 8, 2025

The rocky climb to the Acropolis is long and steep,

the pitch of the return descent posing challenges of its own.

Even walking streets of cobblestone ancient and well-trodden,

uneven stones so worn they have become slick as marble,

even these surfaces can present unexpected danger

to the most confident of travelers.

Through our headsets Stavros shepherds us,

his voice even and strong.

Three small words our guide intones, three brief syllables:

“Mind your steps.”

They become our mantra, unwavering and reliable,

like a steady arm to lean on.

At times the mantra shifts to a warning:

“Mind your belongings”

  or, sometimes,             

“Mind your head”—

all good cautionary advice.

Never does Stavros instruct us to mind our p’s and q’s

for we are grown-ups and generally well-behaved.

In odd moments even now

his protective voice still echoes in my ear

from a place 2,500 years and 6,000 miles away,

and I further contemplate.

Surely if I continue to mind my steps,

then my steps will remind me.

I feel sure Stavros would agree.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that 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.

When First We Met

Suzanne Morris

June 8, 2025

you made away with my heart

and though I chased after you

for more than sixty years

I never could retrieve it.

When first we met,

you popped a pal’s bare butt

with a towel 

in the boys’ gym locker room

then made away

ramming your toes into a

big metal garbage can

you didn’t know

was there.

I fell for a boy on crutches.

When first we met,

you owned a gold cable-knit sweater

that I took on loan to wear 

so I could hold your

charged warmth

against my breast

when you weren’t there.

When first we met you said

you loved me more than

I loved you.

Maybe it was so;

you were always

running ahead.

Now that death has

stopped you cold

I’m back to

where we started:

holding all you

were to me

against my breast

chasing after

memories of that time

when first we met.

Novelist and poet Suzanne Morris married J.C. Morris, her high school sweetheart, in 1963.  Both native Houstonians, the couple moved to Cherokee County in 2008, where Ms. Morris continues to reside.  Mr. Morris passed away in 2023.

Demographics

Milton Jordan

June 8, 2025

Bettina Corrales, our colleague 

in Sociology and Social Work,

scattered the printouts and fact sheets

from her developing dissertation

project analyzing Texas population

patterns from the seven census counts 

since the Second World War across two 

long tables in our crowded office,

seeking somehow to detail the changing

profile of our state’s typical citizen:

race and gender, age and birthplace,

employment and family status;

surprisingly, save for her employment 

outside the hourly-wage labor force,

Bettina fit the profile perfectly.

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

Cinquain Playful Portraits

Irene Keller

June 8, 2025

Happy 

building Lego

cities of bright colors

speedy problem-solver she is

-Ava-

Cheerful

pages to see 

watercolored stories

of fun adventures she creates

-Addy-

Irene Keller enjoys listening to poetry, reading poetry, participating in poetry groups, and playing with language in hopes of creating poetic melodies. 

Cutlines for a Photo of Famine

Chris Ellery

June 8, 2025

“Palestinians in Gaza were still waiting for aid to arrive, U.N. officials said,

two days after the Israeli government said it had lifted

an 11-week-old blockade that has brought the Palestinian

enclave to the brink of famine.”

Reuters, 21 May 2025

Shown here arriving in the Gaza Strip

the bastard child of Strife. At once both male

and female, old and young. Incarnate want,

a shriveled chickpea, sad and dry. Privation

inside a dusty hide stretched tight and stitched

onto a scaffolding of sticks. Where its shadow

falls between the sun and life, the vines

will not require more pruning, gardens fail,

and fattened flocks flee to the winter hills.

Insatiable vultures fly away in disgust

from its pitiful ribs—more meat on a greasy rag,

more protein in a warlord’s mercy. No

sane country wishes for this vagabond,

less loved than Pharaoh’s vermin, more despised

than all the well-fed mice of his granaries.

Hate is its invitation, and when it comes,

it comes to stay. It forages burned fields.

It reaps the rubble of cities bombed and razed.

It feasts from the larder of deathcamps.

It makes its bed in waiting graves. Too weak

to wail, it stares at pity as at unreal bread.

Unlike a lost, emaciated cat or dog,

some starving stray, kindness will not make

it stay, and feeding it drives it away.

Chris Ellery is the author of The Big Mosque of Mercy, a collection of poems based on travels in the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine. His essay "A Boy of Bethany" received the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction.