Two Poems

James Higgins

August 20, 2023

Oasis Hotel

It sat there at the corner of Hwy 80 & Rose St.

painted dark green, not really a hotel & no one

would call it an Oasis.

Three or four second story rooms with

baths & an apartment with two rooms

& a bath where old Judd Sanders & his wife

lived on the west side, the east side was

just single rooms, where heat, reflected off

the black ground floor roof, poured

through always open windows.

Downstairs was the Dept. of Agriculture office,

men in straw cowboy hats who drove green gov’t

pickup trucks & helped farmers grow cotton &

varieties of grain. Storefront windows held photos

& dried wheat stalks, maybe a better kind for

the dry red soil of Taylor County.

My dad lived in one of those west-side rooms

for twenty years or more, ate all his meals at

local cafes. I shared it & those meals with him

on my summer visits, never calling Charlie Dad

though, can’t remember why.

Across the highway/main street & the wide

graveled T & P railroad right of way, was

West 1st Street & the Merkel Hotel, dark

yellow stucco, brown trim, wide porches

for evening shade, more hospitable looking

than the Oasis, maybe too expensive for

Charlie.

The Oasis had convenience though, Charlie’s

machine & auto repair shop was right across

Rose Street from the Oasis, behind the

Greyhound Station & domino parlor next

door to the Highway Café & the ice house

across the alley, a short commute for a man

with a lifelong limp.

Walking to the Oasis (in 1954)

Thunderheads had built

in the north all afternoon,

rising high above the plains.

Rain coming, maybe,

to ease the July heat or

just dry lightning to paint

the dark sky that night.

Ten PM, a walk back to the

Oasis Hotel after a John Wayne

movie at the Queen Theater. I’m

fourteen, Main Street Cafes

all closed, drug store too, a

few loafers parked across

Hwy 80 on the T & P railroad

right of way.

Town Marshal Fulton was

there earlier in his weathered

Ford coupe, red spotlights

ready to give chase to Yankee

speeders blowing through

Merkel’s two traffic signals.

Lightning flashes, too far

away to provide light, make

shadows around the recessed

storefronts deeper, darker. Scariest

corner is where the old Greyhound

station sits. Shadows loom among

the tall gas pumps, maybe hiding

scary men my mother warned me

could be lurking.

Jackknife open in my pocket,

sharpened against fear, danger.

Fingers linger too long near

the blade, blood soaks the pocket

of my new Sears-Roebuck jeans,

a half-block & a dark stairway

from safety. 

Born in Abilene, James Higgins spent the first fifteen years of his life in Texas, living in San Antonio during the school year, then spending most summers with his dad in the little town of Merkel, where both his parents were born. Two different worlds, city life vs. small town.

Haiku

Chip Dameron

August 13, 2023

red sun

rises out of humid haze

oven opens

Chip Dameron has published eleven collections of poetry and a travel journal. His poems, as well as his essays on contemporary writers, have appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad. He is a professor emeritus of English at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he’s also been a Dobie Paisano fellow.

Lighten Up

Alan Berecka

August 6, 2023

You don’t have to be Atlas 

to know this world is a heavy place.

If the meek be blessed, I ask

what of the belligerent, the alpha dogs 

who bite and claw, stepping on others

all the way to what they see as success,

unburdened by pangs of conscience?

By adding to the burden, piling on, 

they do nothing more than aid gravity’s

mindless force that crushes the life 

out of all of us a bit quicker 

than it would leave on its own.

No, I believe the real the trick, the only true 

human accomplishment, is to make the world

a lighter place. Start small, pat a slouching back, 

hand out a compliment, dry a tear, share a smile, 

or a laugh, create some art, lift a soul, 

if even it’s just your own, or better yet, 

let your work reach a friend or two, 

or go all out like the saints, open 

your heart wide, feed the hungry, 

cure the sick, visit the lonely, 

befriend justice and reap 

the blessings, listen

for the sigh

of Atlas.

Alan Berecka is the author of five books of poetry, the latest A Living is Not a Life: A Working Title (2021, Black Spruce Press) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. His poetry has appeared in such journals and websites as The Christian Century, The Concho River Review, The Texas Review, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Main Street Rag.  He recently participated in the Lithuanian Writers Union’s international spring poetry festival which took place in May 2022. This was the second time Berecka has been invited to read at festivals in the birthplace of two grandparents. He earned his living for many years as a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. In January 2023, he finally lived long enough so he retired. He and his wife Alice reside in Sinton, Texas where they raised their now two adult children.

Family Trait

James Higgins

July 30, 2023

Something about life made Mary Pence put

the barrel of the thirty-eight in her open mouth

then pull the trigger. She was nearing sixty-five,

widowed, old house falling down around her.

Herb had survived two heart attacks, kept on

driving the dump truck, third one got him

at fifty-eight.  Son, Jimmy Don was the local

distributor for the Abilene newspaper,

responsible for making sure the paper

got delivered each morning, building

circulation in Merkel, helping sell ads.

Abilene was sixteen miles away, people

might go there to shop, beat the prices charged

by Merkel’s small-town grocers and drug

stores, but no one cared much about the news

from Abilene, got it on tv stations every night.

Anyhow, no need to pay for delivery. Jimmy

Don married, local girl, had two kids, rented

a house on the south side near the tracks.

Later, some said it was his job, maybe he

just missed being a boy, running wild,

hunting, fishing, beating all comers

at the pool hall or maybe it was just

something about his life too,

made him cock his deer rifle,

hold it against his chest, pull

the trigger and die there

without a note to say goodbye,

no reason why.

Born in Abilene, James Higgins spent the first fifteen years of his life in Texas, living in San Antonio during the school year, then spending most summers with his dad in the little town of Merkel, where both his parents were born. Two different worlds, city life vs. small town.

Author’s note: names changed to protect privacy.

Texas Open

Jeffrey L. Taylor

July 23, 2023

Facing each other across the Edwards Escarpment,
the Coastal Plain opens, serving up Gulf moisture
to the Hill Country, which returns a spinning Polar Vortex.
Rain and ice drive sideways. The Coastal Plain scrambles
to return the volley. The match goes into overtime,
two nights. Austin trees reach break point.

Jeffrey L. Taylor's first submitted poems won 1st place and runner-up in Riff Magazine's 1994 Jazz and Blues Poetry Contest.  Encouraged, he continues to write and has been published in di-vêrsé-city, The Perch, Enchantment of the Ordinary anthology, Texas Poetry Calendar, The Langdon Review, and Texas Poetry Assignment.  Serving as sensei (instructor) to small children and professor to graduate students has taught him humility.

Houston Tour Stop

Thomas Quitzau

July 16, 2023

We can forget the long quietude of July twilight

Brief pale blue glow of late afternoon’s sky

Cradling a moon you’d find in a children’s book

Fans are all out tonight, led by a few groupie cries

Piercing, upstaging chirps of neurotic cardinals

Open an evening fit for the nocturnal kings

Warm-up bands for night hawks’ trickery before

Roadies clear the stage and the sun goes down

Now headliner bats ellipse synch between streetlights

Ultrasonically socking it to the mosquitoes

Please, God, let there be multiple encores

Shoot, where’s my lighter when I need it

Thomas Quitzau grew up in the Gulf Coast region and worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A self-ascribed member of the ZenJourno School of Poetry, Tom recently relocated with his family to Long Island, New York where he teaches and writes.

Joie de Vivre

Suzanne Morris

April 30, 2023

Willem de Kooning made me feel

as if

in a fit of fury he had sloshed paint

one bucket after another

at the unsuspecting canvas

then applied broad brush strokes

and squiggly lines,

calling the chaotic result his Art;

made me feel he was sloshing the paint

at me

as I stood uncomprehending

in a museum gallery, high-walled and

reverent.

Then I read in her obituary how this

much younger woman

changed de Kooning’s painting once

she became his muse

her joie de vivre infecting him,

making him love painting

as he had not done in years.

Chatting companionably out on

a big porch

in matching rocking chairs of

outsized, spindled wood frames,

the couple seem less like a

wealthy, influential arts patron 

and a painter of international

renown,

than a pair of frisky pre-teens, fresh from

Friday’s school dismissal bell:

Mimi’s dark hair and

pixie smile

above a black turtleneck

and bare feet,

floppy-haired Willem in

horn-rimmed glasses,

wrinkled cargo pants and

moccasins, unlaced.

Could it be, under the

influence of Mimi,

Willem’s frog became

a prince?

Open to a change of heart, I return for

another look at

East Hampton Garden Party

the pivotal painting she inspired, of the

place where first they met.

Promising myself I will not be intimidated 

I inhale deeply and imagine

diving head-first into the painting’s

ocean blue

sun-spattered swirling

waves of

staggeringly bright

reds, yellows and greens

engulfing me, drenching me in their

energy and their light.

Emerging, then, I ride high above 

on the wings of a great seabird

peering down at a

riotous topography of

garden paths meandering through

towering gladiolus, tulips, daffodils

and fringes of wispy sea grass,

neon green;

see a woman in sun hat and

off-the-shoulder dress

her forearm reaching from a

shimmery blue sleeve

toward a man’s outstretched hand,

her lips forming the words,

Am I ever going to see you again?

–After the obituary for Houston native Emilie “Mimi” Kilgore, December 25th, 2022, New York Times.  Ms. Kilgore had served on the boards of Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Contemporary Arts Museum. 

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet.  Her work is included in several poetry anthologies, most recently, Lone Star Poetry (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022).  Her poems have appeared in The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Pine Cone Review, Emblazoned Soul Review, and Creatopia Magazine.  Ms. Morris lives in Cherokee County, Texas.

Closed

Ulf Kirchdorfer

April 2, 2023

Open. A sign of hope

to get liquor or beer,

a warm place to be

with other lonely hearts.

What does it mean

to open your heart

to the Lord? Is he

going to come

and perform heart 

surgery or just do

one of those special-

effects moves

and reside in your

aging body

and give you hope

when you drag

yourself to another

doctor’s visit.

Open. Closed. 

Open. Closed.

We are not here for you.

Ulf Kirchdorfer grew up in Texas before entering exile in Georgia, mandated by “demand” for English professors. He spends much of his time photographing birds. He has published books of poems with Lamar Literary UP and frequented the Texas-based journals Amarillo Bay, Borderlands, Concho River Review, descant, the Texas Observer, RE:AL, and others. Outside of Texas, his work has found lodging in Poetry Daily, Harvard Review, and Rolling Stone magazine.

National Poetry Month Opened on Opening Day

Milton Jordan

April 1, 2023

Old poets sharpened two pencils, scoring

the Cardinals - Astros from TV coverage,

a few purists from radio voices,

and turned, between innings, to our notebooks

with fresh pencils to line double meaning

into the gaps on those pages  

writing visions of a World Series 

Opening Day always seems to promise.

Milton Jordan grew up in Houston. His dad took him to his first Houston Buff game when he was nine years old. He has attended Opening Day in several Major, Minor, and Semi-pro League ballparks.

Where My Heart is Home

Thomas Hemminger

March 26, 2023

My heart knows the way back

down that open highway

lined with Texas wildflowers

and a sleepy railroad track. 

I don’t need the worn out map

laying folded on the dusty floorboard

of my trusty pick-up truck. 

We’ve been down that familiar road

so many times, for many so years now. 

I wish to load up the bed again, 

and take off that way

to where I long to be:

standing in a high hayfield,

under a wide, blue sky,

bathing in the warm rays

of an early-summer sunset. 

No other care, save

watching the rural birds

coasting slowly in their lofty heights;

hearing the neighbor’s cattle 

calling to each other; and

smelling the sage, the lemongrass, 

and the honeysuckle. 

That is the glorious place, 

where my heart is home.  

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. 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.