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Hunker Down
she said in the middle of a sentence
telling me about the time she
ran from the twister
and I thought
what an odd expression
but that's what she did
in a ditch
in a field
outside a small town
springtime in Texas
where some things remain wild and woolly
Rebecca Hatcher Travis
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Travis in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading
at
the Blue Willow Bookshop.
This is Travis's first appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Travis, of Friendswood, is a member of
the Gulf Coast Poets and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers
and Storytellers.
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Texas Greater Fritillary
a butterfly! a flash
of brown and bone
silver fritillary underwings
fanning light around my feet
i sit on paving stones
and watch it preen
dark antennae quivering
in examination of my flesh
pale hair-thin tube extending
to siphon up what moisture
could be found between my toes
an impulse to catch it
flits past, unused
instead, i watch till
wings and wind carry it away
in a perfect mix of curves and line
thinner than the finest paper
lighter than my breath
more delicate
than any word i know
Deborah A. Akers
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Akers in Austin at a Dos Gatos Press reading
at
BookPeople.
This is Akers's first appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Akers, of Austin, is a retired teacher who
serves on the board of directors of both Borderlands and AIPF. She also edits
a yearly anthology of poems for young people, Diverse Youth.
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Early
in the Morning, on the Road,
near Franklin, Texas
Her skirt clings
to her the way fog clings to a flower.
Her legs are curled up, her sleeping face soft like a saint.
Driving for hours a man thinks about how things are measured,
about how coffee always tastes better in small towns.
Her legs are curled up, her sleeping face soft like a saint.
St. Augustine said the eye is attracted to beautiful objects.
Coffee always tastes better in small towns;
the treasures of the destination make us take the trip.
St. Augustine said the eye is attracted to beautiful objects.
The full moon makes her skin glow like a statue.
The treasures en route make us take the trip.
I start out thinking in terms of miles and hours
but the full moon makes her skin translucent like a statue.
Her breathing is as fragrant and sure as moonflowers
and I stop thinking in terms of miles and hours.
She'll wake up in a little while and touch me with her bare toe.
But for now, her breathing is as fragrant as moonflowers.
Driving for hours a man thinks about what makes things holy.
She'll wake up in a little while and bless me with her bare toe,
her skirt clinging to her the way fog caresses a flower.
Alan Birkelbach
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Birkelbach in Denton at a Dos Gatos Press reading
at
the Center for the Visual Arts.
This is Birkelbach's second appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Birkelbach, of Plano, was the Texas State Poet
Laureate for 2005
and is the author of four books of poetry, including the
latest, New & Selected Works,
from TCU Press's Poet Laureate Series.
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Houston:
Early April
Each day I watch for new crape myrtle
leaves, their fresh greenness bright
against the dark, vine-covered fence.
Each time I think I may catch them
growing, see some infinitesimal motion,
but they must move only in the night.
Outside my big glass window, a blue jay
has made her nest in the hanging fern
nestled under the eaves of the roof.
Sitting atop her eggs, she is motionless,
tail in the air, head looking straight out
toward the yard, eyes unblinking.
Part of me yearns to watch everything
unfolding and unfurling, pushing up,
popping out, spreading and blossoming.
But part of me really wants a spring like this,
seemingly stopped in its tracks when I am looking,
I who dread the long summer and its everlasting heat.
Cathy Stern
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Stern in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading
at
the Blue Willow Bookshop.
This
is Stern's fourth appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Stern, of Houston, received the PEN Southwest
Houston Discovery Prize
for Poetry in 1985. She has taught creative writing for Inprint and the
University of Houston,
where she is a part-time English instructor.
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Waxwings
We waited all
year for the passover
of the cedar waxwings. They fly north
on their pilgrimage over the Hill Country
then on to the Great Lakes.
Winter visitors--we could mark off the days
until they congregated in the pecans,
their thin song like choir boys
before their voices have broken.
But this year a wave of warm weather in March
confused everyone. Berries swelled on the ligustrum--
and like a font, the birdbath overflowed,
but the waxwings never came.
We dreamed of waxwings,
their gold-tipped tails, their crested cloaks,
then we awoke to find the trees stripped of fruit.
Some lay crushed and bleeding
on the ground, but the air was silent,
the waxwings gone.
Sally Alter
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Alter in Burnet at a Dos Gatos Press reading at
the Verandas Guest House.
This is Alter's third appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Alter, of Kerrville, is originally from London.
currently at work on a mainstream novel, she is the
former editor of the international e-jounal illuminations.
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Texas
Unfurling
Springtime is on the byway
burgeoning with promise
bluebonnets
buttercups
wildflowers in rustic glory.
Pollen-coated cars, aliens to the bloom,
are conveyors to resplendent scenes
garden packed with yellow roses
roadside field of blushing fragrance
pocket of elms sporting tender green shoots.
First, one more hard freeze
and an oil change.
Stephanie "Stevie" McHugh
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McHugh in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading
at
the Blue Willow Bookshop.
This
is McHugh's first appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. McHugh, of Houston, is a poet, songwriter,
newspaper columnist, and short story writer who is involved with
numerous writing groups in the Houston area.
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February
It arrives each
February: a red envelope containing two foil-wrapped chocolate hearts
and bearing no return address, having followed her across eighteen
years, six states, eight homes, three careers.
She wonders how the sender always finds her, each message composed of
words sliced from newspapers, a ransom note holding someone's heart
hostage, its anonymous text unvarying:
You Were
Born to be Mine, Why Even Fight It.
Not a question, a
statement.
She's not sure whether to feel flattered or threatened.
Perhaps it's a prank by her brother to whom she once confided
that life seemed devoid of romantic possibilities ever since she'd left
Texas.
But February passes with no red envelope, no chocolates. She
feels relief, mostly--yes, relief!--but tinged with something like
regret, something like curiosity, wondering whether the author merely
gave up or died, leaving behind a mystery that will never be solved.
Erica Lehrer
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Lehrer in Houston at a Dos Gatos Press reading at
the Blue Willow Bookshop.
This is Lehrer's first appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Lehrer, of Houston, is a graduate of Princeton
and the New York University School of Law. She is a founding member of
the Net Poetry Society.
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Marble
Falls
I think of the David,
pristinely white,
with his huge hands and eyes,
carved to grace the top of the Duomo.
I picture Michelangelo's quarry in Carrara
shaken by earthquake
or slipping chisel,
the slide of titanic blocks.
And I remember the trip we made
when the children were small
to this Texas town and
the lake where bald eagles come
to winter and to breed,
in spring when the young ones fledge.
On the boat the children craned slim necks
to search the broad sky,
only the eagles flying over limestone cliffs,
no stone angels.
Anita M. Barnard
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Barnard in Ft. Worth at a Dos Gatos Press reading
at
the Center for Ft. Worth Community Arts Center (CAC).
This
is Barnard's first appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Barnard, of Ft. Worth, is a poet and visual
artist who has co-edited three poetry anthologies, most recently Above Us Only Sky
(Incarnate Muse Press).
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Eighteen
Days on the Ground
Can it be more
than twenty years and still they speak
of snow that
stayed so long upon the ground?
Eighteen days, they say, as if it
just occurred.
Any snow at all is rare in
northeast Texas.
When it comes, it
comes and goes so quickly
that it seems a dream.
But not that year, in 1983.
It came and stayed, and froze
into a dirty ice
that gripped imagination in a
vise from which
they could not free themselves.
Only tongues
thawed and said over and over how
long
it stayed. Folks
tottered on the frozen ground
as they walked around discussing
snow
with neighbors just as shocked as
they.
My parents had a picture window
six feet wide
through which they stared for
eighteen days
as if they watched a marathon of
old sitcoms.
I suppose it was the wonder of it
all, one-time
phenomenon, that made this story
last. I smile
at what I tell, and that I tell
it once again.
Linda Banks
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Banks in Denton at a Dos Gatos Press reading at
the Center for the Visual Arts.
This is Banks' sixth appearance in a
Texas Poetry Calendar. Banks, of Mesquite, is a Life Member of the
Poetry Society of Texas, of which she is a past president.
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It's
Been Fun
The poem I would have written
today has crawled under the bed with her old blanket and her fat
stuffed donkey. She won't come out, even though I lie on the
cold floor, coaxing. Too
many words, she complains. She gets this way,
occasionally, even if recent conversations have been intimate,
personal. After a while, she pulls on her favorite T-shirt: IT'S BEEN FUN BUT I HAVE TO
SCREAM NOW.
Then it's into the dark closet she goes, near the comfort of my thick
bathrobe. But this bunkhouse guestroom I'm in has no closet.
After a full day with friends and laughter, she's retreated,
regrouping, under the bed.
I'm doing the only thing I know to do--hunker down on top of the bed,
above her. Breathe, and write, and wait.
I would drag her out by a foot or a hank of hair, but I know better.
I've learned a little compassion for both of us, maybe even
some wisdom along the way. Like the trinity of fat pregnant
donkeys who showed up at the bunkhouse gate last evening, she's also
gestating--I know it, even if she doesn't--and I, the midwife, can do
no more than attend in patient silence, waiting for her time to come.
Martha K. Grant
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Grant in Burnet at a Dos Gatos
Press reading at the Verandas Guest House.
This is Grant's first poem in a Texas
Poetry
Calendar. Grant, of Boerne, is a sixth-generation German Texan and a
visual artist who weaves passages of poetry and text into her fiber
collages.
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