Poems of the Month

Alexander in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading at the Blue Willow Book Shop.

This is Alexander's first appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Alexander, of Houston, has published in Borderlands, Circumberence, Texas Review, Atlanta Review, and other journals.

July 2010 Featured Poems

Stealing Flowers

I went outside in July to see the stars
and surprised a neighbor stealing
sprigs of rosemary.
She was embarrassed and soon after
planted her own bush, which grew larger
and more handsome than mine. She doesn't
know I steal from her neighbor's
Japanese quince every spring. I take a
low-growing branch that won't be
missed but will be much admired
in my tall blue vase. I didn't say
I know the best place to pinch a branch
of fuchsia bougainvillea, cut an ivory
leaf of ginger or snip enough
aurelia to fill a room with lemon-
scented joy. We garden thieves
respect the blooms of others. We are
careful, not greedy. But we do believe in
sharing the exuberant green wealth.
So I did not begrudge her the nocturnal
stealth and hope she forgives me the small
branch of twining jasmine missing
from her sidewalk garden.

Beverly Voss

Voss in Austin at a Dos Gatos Press reading at BookPeople.

This is Voss's Second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Voss, of Austin, has had poems in What the Body Wants, Walking in Two Worlds, and Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair.

On Choosing a New Hobby

Mom let me help her weed our Victory Garden
once, but after I pulled up every single, tiny
sprouting carrot from the row, she decided
my talents lay in different directions.

After marriage, I tried again, had a bit
of success growing mint, sage, and rosemary.
Then I added two tomato plants,
and from the far corners of the globe,
every errant spider mite, snail, slug--
and three ugly giant tomato worms--
came to feast on my plants.
Blue jays zeroed in, attacking the few
Big Boys left the minute they began to ripen.
I hid each tomato under a gardening glove
when the slightest blush appeared.
The few survivors were delicious,
but I added up the costs, realized
I couldn't afford homegrown tomatoes.

Years passed. Memory faded.
I decided to try gardening again.
As I stepped outside,
a six-foot long snake slithered
across my path. I stepped back inside.
Maybe I'll take up découpage.

Marilyn Stacy

Stacy in Dallas at a Dos Gatos Press reading at Half-Price Books.

This is Stacy's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Stacy, of Dallas, the President of the Poetry Society of Texas, 2006-2008, is the author of Sometimes You Have to Laugh, a Poet's Look at Cancer.

June 2010 Featured Poems

The Manual Said

Stay calm. If capsized,
the SlimHull 250 will right itself--
so we neither feared nor fought the boiling rapids,
gave up futile attempts to steer our passage.

Like a fiberglass log,
we bounced boulder to boulder down the Devil's Chute.
Soaked and smiling, you looked back
and we toasted the ride with swigs of watery brew.

So this can hardly be a surprise.
Neon blue vest keeps my head above water,
gulping air, flailing arms.
Yellow helmet absorbs blows intended to crack and split.

My left leg might be broken,
but these aquifers are chill and numb the pain.
So I cling to this low hanging branch,
scan the surface for a glimpse of your red helmet.

Oh, and the canoe--last I saw,
it had righted itself, made it through the chute,
headed merrily down the stream.

Alan Gann

Gann in Dallas at a Dos Gatos Press reading at Half-Price Books.

This is Gann's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Gann, of Plano, is an assistant editor for Ilya's Honey, with poems in Main Street Rag, Borderlands, North Texas Review, and other publications.

Glow

Out of blue shadowed woods, fireflies
dart through leafy hedges,
drift up in silence, swimming
to the moon in shimmering chains.
A round-shouldered woman watches
from a screened porch
as she rocks a restless baby.

In a world too hot and dry for magic,
she wonders why she hasn't seen them
for years, thought they no longer existed.
Now she knows she can chase them,
chase them with her grandson
beneath a summer moon.

She descends weatherworn
steps, captures one, feels it flutter
in her closed hand. Her solemn
almond-eyed grandson studies
spaces between her trembling fingers
and sees it glow.

Dede Fox

Fox in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading at the Blue Willow Bookshop.

This is Fox's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Fox, of the Woodlands, is the first-place winner of the 2008 Christina Sergeyevna Award, and has poems in Poetry Revolt, Swirl, and Poetry at Round Top.

May 2010 Featured Poems

Los Señores del Patio

Slowly, they stroll into
a fieldstone courtyard,
sit quietly, talk.

Siete señores.

Inside quiet conversations
their fingertips cling to
the edge of history's cliff.

Siete caballeros de pelo blanco.

Century-old live oaks
record their memories,
stories of times gone by.

Red, wooden slat benches,
iron legs and armrests
are their notepads.

Siete mil recuerdos.

Governor's Palace statues,
morning courtyard fixtures,
time yields in their honor--

para estos siete señores;
estos siete caballeros--
siete gallos orgullosos.

P.C. McKinnon

McKinnon in San Antonio at a Dos Gatos Press reading at the Twig Book Shop.

This is McKinnon's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. McKinnon, of San Antonio, has published poems in Voices along the River, Dreamcatcher, Voices de la Luna, and Sol Magazine, among others.

Concoction

Any mother will tell you that
it is not the Mona Lisa in the Louvre
with her dull blue dress poised against
a nondescript mountain that moves her to wonder.

Her child's face that glistens like a freshly cut
pear between cupped palms
surpasses in its sweetness and mystery,
this stroke of genius--nature's art-play--
leaving her helpless with the mystery of life.

To this romping child
bananas are duty, nectarines pure delight,
strawberries the best, cherries because I love them.
Our deck is an artist's gallery to view
a sky the color of papaya,
sunset juice dribbled on the sky's chin,
one sweet sigh from Austin's sunsets.

Is guacamole a vegetable or fruit?--we toss the question--
Is she Indian or American?

Usha Akella

Akella in Austin at a Dos Gatos Press reading at BookPeople.

This is Akella's first appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Akella, of Austin, reads and publishes all over the world. Her most recent book is a face that does not bear the footprints of the world.

April 2010 Featured Poems

Huff

for albert Huffstickler, 1927-2002

Shrugged off his infirmities
and lit another cig, suffering
from a case of cold coffee.

His increasingly rare readings
were big events. Hell,
Huff crossing the street

was a big event. He walked
at a crawl. He mistimed
lights. He didn't dare

look up as the cars
crept round him.
He may make it yet.

Joe Blanda

Blanda in Austin at a Dos Gatos Press reading at BookPeople.

This is Blanda's fourth appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Blanda, of Austin, is a musician and singer-songwriter as well as a poet. Check out his songs at http://www.myspace.com/joeblanda

From a Distance

you can't see that he's old,
nor can you tell he's dying.
Salt air invigorates his raggedy
body, just as it does ours.
He lopes across the little spit of land--
not like the rampaging bruiser of old,
but as an elder statesman,
relishing memories,
the feel of Gulf wind in his face.

We pause, watch him,
forefeet braced on bulkhead,
eagerly scanning the water,
hoping a mullet will leap for light,
even as spray from shattered waves
showers him like a benedition.

Remember when he was young,
flung himself from the bulkhead,
began paddling to Cuba?
Remember going after him?
Pacing the shore as you waded
farther and farther out,
I thought you were both goners.

He's starting to stagger now.
Let's get him home, before
we have to carry him.

Toni H. Falls

Falls in San Antonio at a Dos Gatos Press reading at the Twig.

This is Falls' first appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Falls, of San Antonio, has had poems in the San Antonio Express-News, as well as the anthologies Voices Along the River and Dreamcatcher.

March 2010 Featured Poems

Hill Country Galleria

The kestrel tilting on the wire
surveys the hundred-acre site
that just last winter was the field
that fueled her lilting falcon flight.

She watches rock saws slicing trenches
and dozers climbing piles of dirt
three stories high, toppling gigantic
boulders--each a buffalo's girth.

The grass is gone.
(Flocks of sparrows.)
Soil, gone.
(Mice, their burrows.)

She's living on the brink
of locally extinct.

Robert A. Ayres

Ayres in Austin at a Dos Gatos Press reading at BookPeople.

This is Ayres' Third appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Ayres, of Austin, has had poems appear recently in Iron Horse, Laurel Review, Marlboro Review, and Rattle.

West Texas Rite of Passage

Night's changes make brittle bones
even at sixteen. Tumbleweed fences
tear tissue from bones, cuticles ruffle
like the corners of well-loved books. Sixteen,
always forgetting gloves. Face half-striped
from relentless sun beating
with its golden hammer, a bandana
guarding nose and mouth leaves those parts pale.

The test: to bring one more live out of crazy #27,
a spook cow so wild she'd blow snot in your pocket
as she chased you over the corral fence.
Ribs stretched wide now, she's too old
to damage much desert, too old to domino alone.
Wrap the calving chains neat, and wench 'em
to pommel and horse. When she pushes,
crank like hell. That slick calf, a dark tadpole,
darts out, at once sprouting legs. Blood thumps
out of that cow making muddy slush
and she falls, shaking the ground.

Granddad waits at the barn, hands shoved in jeans,
shoulders hunched against the chill.
"Morning, Biggun," I holler.
"Hey there, sweet girl. How's my sidekick?
How'd you do?"
"A squirmy black-faced lepe.
But the cow--
Well, I lost the meat--no freezer.
Here's the hide."

Solana DeLámant

DeLámant in Dallas at a Dos Gatos Press reading at Half Price Books.

This is DeLámant's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. DeLámant, of Dallas, is published in the U.S. and abroad, and she is currently working on translating poems of several contemporary Mexican women poets.

February 2010 Featured Poems

Wintering

It snowed last night--
crystals
floating
down
a white-aired silence
enveloped the bones of trees,
swept a trail of tortured groiund
to the rusted harrows
of an old John Deere
sowing iron,
wanting
to ravish one last acre.

Oscar Peña

Peña in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading at the Blue Willow Book Shop.

This is Peña's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Peña, of League City, was a juried poet at the 2007 Houston Poetry Fest. He has poems in the Rio Grande International Poetry Festival Anthology.

My Husband Says I Smell Like

a cross between mesquite barbeque and a telephone pole,
from this waxy herbal ointment on my arm--
a recent skirmish with a spiky yucca plant having left me
with the angry red souvenir of a rash.

It's a Texas thing, I write to a friend in the northeast,
in confessing my somewhat nostalgic addiction to this
slightly disgusting, but strangely familiar scent.
He admits not knowing much about mesquite,
"But what is it with you and creosote?"
He says they no longer put it on phone poles,
it runs off into the drainage
and makes the frogs "grow extra things."

I can't explain it, ticking off the label's ingredients:
tallow, pine tar, olive oil, chickweed.
This pungent memory must live under a rock,
somewhere in that reptilian part of my brain,
where it recognized its own and has crawled out,
sniffing.

Martha K. Grant

Grant in San Antonio at a Dos Gatos Press reading at the Twig Book Shop.

This is Grant's second appearance in a Texas Poetry Calendar. Grant, of Boerne, with poems in such journals as New Texas, California State Quarterly, and others. is the author of three poetry chapbooks.

January 2010 Featured Poems

Blue Norther

Winter of '79 I fainted.
I remember walking
into an Amarillo 7-Eleven
out of a wind chill of five degrees
and snow blowing sideways
through barbed wire fences.

The heat inside the store
rushed my head like a cattle train.
I felt it coming and tried to sit
on a case of Texaco motor oil
but tumble-weeded head first
onto the concrete floor.

I woke up sprawled
as flat on my back as a hippie
high on Colombian redbud.
Strangers leaned over me,
wind-beaten West Texas faces
scrunched in concern. "You think
we should call an ambulance?"

"No," I shook my head
as a cowboy pulled me to my feet.
"It's just the flu," I lied
and hurried out the door.
That was thirty years ago
and I've remained
too embarrassed to visit
Amarillo again.

Travis Blair