Two Cats, Two Dogs, a Bird, the Sun

Chris Ellery

May 3, 2026

Inside an egg in Il Museo Galileo 

in the city of Dante and Beatrice and Leonardo 

and Michelangelo, a middle finger of the astronomer 

ambiguously points heavenward.

Feel the scientist’s presence here at my son’s house 

in the city called The Yellow Rose of Texas,

“Bomb City,” 

city of nukes and helium. 

Earth is un-tilting toward its renaissance, 

near perpendicular in its revolution, vernal equality 

of day and night. And in this season of regreening, 

what Galilei could bear to think of leaving?

Two cats and two dogs stare out the storm door, 

devotees rapt in the shimmer of atomic power, 

all silent on their haunches and as still 

as statues of Anubis.

Far from the mortuary bitterness of pyramid blackness, 

an awakening redbud lives in sunny brightness,

its shadow imperceptibly advancing on the grass, 

sundial evidence of heliocentric rightness. 

Beneath our nearest star, pansies contemplate 

the mud. The live oaks drop their leaves. 

Plum and pear begin to bloom. A cardinal 

blazes in the beams, calling to his nesting mate. 

In his cheery song, a young madonna passes, 

pushing a stroller, her stardust baby just beginning 

to comprehend the Empyrean vastness 

and the rhythm of the turning. 

Indifferent to all this flow, the geocentric 

pope or king would blast design 

and torture every satellite to keep all things

within the self-sustaining gravity of status quo.

And most of us would bend to power, I suppose, 

pretend to faith in any nonsense, give fact the bird

for one more orbit, one more year of chiaroscuro—

nay, but one more hour! After all, the sunshine falls 

with equal glory on the graves of hero and heretic 

martyr and liar. Truth doesn’t need our witness 

or permission. The same stars dance forever in bliss 

in the perfect eyes of Beatrice.

Chris Ellery is the author of six poetry collections, including The Big Mosque of Mercy, based on his residence in Syria and travels in the Middle East. He is the recipient of the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Texas Poetry Prize. 

Propaganda masquerading as “truthiness” is a staple of political discourse, but the current U.S. president and his cohorts have amped up their attacks on the facts and those who reveal them to a level generally seen only in police states. As far as I know, people haven’t been spirited away and executed in the middle of the night, but certainly the DoJ and DHS have been weaponized to discourage free speech that offends Donald Trump.

Primarily through the allusion to Galileo Galilei, my poem uses the Historical Topographical Pattern to expose and ridicule those who suppress truth, and secondarily those who deny or conceal the truth they know because they fear the consequences if they don't. The poem also attacks the military-industrial complex and our culture of both personal and institutional violence.

State of the Bluebonnet

Irene Keller

May 3, 2026

Bluebonnets replace dull fields of winter,

promise new beginnings, renewed hope;

natural freedom of blue dissuades being

uprooted for personal wants of ownership.

A bluebonnet put into the hands of every child

to place on one preferred altar, as ancient stories

are taught, inhibits youth’s need to skip through

bonnets of blue that kiss the wind not owned.

The Key

The title offers a double meaning: the state flower bluebonnet is a familiar symbol for Texas; the title is also a bureaucratic reference to TEA’s corrupt use of bluebonnet as a title for the K-5 Bluebonnet Learning curriculum that includes biblical stories, an influential means of building Christian nationalism, while also violating separation of church and state.  

The hinge poem contrasts the natural, free-flowing wave of bluebonnets to TEA’s misleading use of the nonpartisan, beauty of the state flower, camouflaging the promotion of one religion, with a money incentive for financially challenged ISDs to adopt. 

The poem applies the environmental camouflage theme: bluebonnets are not to be owned by anyone, a metaphor for religious freedom.  

Irene Keller, PhD. A former Texas public educator who can now indulge herself in the world of poetry. 

Death Cap Mushrooms of the Big Thicket

Jesse Doiron

April 5, 2026

The mushrooms while away in undergrowth;

wet weather there will tell them when to spore,

mycelia, more plentiful than oak

in this archipelago of thickets.

The mushrooms, clad in soft impressions, seem

mere shadows cast upon the forest floor.  

But they, in thick and musky silence, scheme,

on tiptoe, quietly, from tree to tree.

The mushrooms hide in towns beneath the yards,

tie threads of wisp in knots between the lanes,

and string them out along the piney trails,

poisoning the tamed and untamed places –

where feral hogs know well which ones to eat,

but careless men, content, consume the treat.

Jesse Doiron has worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as an educator and consultant. His teaching experience ranges from English for international business at the UC – Berkeley Extension in San Francisco to creative writing at the Mark Stiles Maximum Security Prison for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Read Jesse’s explication here.

the live oak grove still grows

d. ellis phelps

April 5, 2026

beside the big

white house

on the hill

the live oak grove

still grows

the grove has grown there

long and sweet

so the story goes

~

some say

the grove is totally wrong

—unsightly mess that doesn’t belong

and every spring         on everything

all that green               so much green

~

bringing axes

some have come

to cut the growing grove

but the roots have spread

—have taken hold

& far from the booted tread

through mycorrhizal 

millions

underneath

rise      resilient live oak heads

d. ellis phelps is the author of five collections of poems, most recently, book of common breath (Kelsay Books, 2026).

Lordean Key:

In this poem, I use an environmental shell to protect multiple signals I wish to send. The heartbeats include an individual’s rights or group of individuals rights to exist in their own form and as a unique identity, the live oak, alongside the bureaucratic powers that be without being cut down; the fact that bureaucracies misuse their power, axes, to try to suppress and eliminate that which they deem unsightly; and the power of individuals in community, the grove, to be resilient and to continue to grow by forming networks, mycorrhizal, making unseen connections or going underneath.