Featured Poems

From the 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar

January 2012

“Wolf Moon (January)” by Patricia Spears Bigelow
“Winter Grackles” by Jeff Santosuosso

Busted Oil Pan

My own fault. On a washed-out road
west of Bandera, high-centered the van,
tore a hole in the oil pan that left
a five-quart puddle of 30-weight
and a vehicle not going anywhere.
Lucky my friend’s mechanic in town
is a Bodhisattva in the making.
Eyes the old green Chevy,
“Sure you want to stick 800 bucks in this?”
I can’t resist: “Ah, grasshopper, many miles
together we have gone.”
He only smiles. He’s dealt with strange
old goats before. “Four days, give or take,
I’ll call you up in Austin when it’s done.”
Took a Greyhound home, a Greyhound back.
Costly lesson: stones and icebergs
keep their true size hidden from the eye.

Ralph Hausser read with us December 3, 2011, at BookPeople in Austin. Ralph has recent work in Borderlands, di-verse-city, Farfelu, and elsewhere; he won first place in the 2006 Texas Poetry Calendar awards.

Yippie-ai-ku

for Nona

Out in West Texas
sandpaper storms scrub the sky
back to perfect blue

Neil Meili read with us December 3, 2011, at BookPeople in Austin. A longtime member of the Austin Poetry Society, Neil is the author of twenty-five chapbooks, including Take Two Haiku and Call Me in the Morning.

Claire Vogel Camargo read with us December 3, 2011, at BookPeople in Austin. First-place winner of the Austin Poetry Society’s 2010 haiku contest, Claire has had poetry in di-verse-city, America Remembered, and other publications.

Near San Marcos

The sign says NO TRESPASSING, but the birds
do it all the time with no consequence.
Good binoculars. I watch a mockingbird drop down
from an elm. An unlucky moth feels—what?
The bird stabs it quickly, too big,
so eats a bit at a time, hard for a creature,
handless. Head-shaking gestures. Now and then
the bird pauses to look around for danger.
It flies away, moth in beak.
My friend
has just seen a rattlesnake sneak into a hole.
Spring. Walking along, we kick forth butterflies,
small ones, there for transient yellow wildflowers.
Train tracks not far away. A freight clicks by,
its loud whistle. Yes, a crossing up ahead.
Most cars carry gravel hills which come to points
as if mountains. Ah, April tends its wildnesses.

Ken Fontenot read with us December 3, 2011, at BookPeople in Austin. Ken won the Austin Book Award in 1988; he has a new collection of poetry, In a Kingdom of Birds.

Traversing Houston by Bus

This city loops
around a spoke
of veined highways,
overlapping asphalt,
and a cracking concrete center which
I pass over, under, around, through
again and again
unable to find the heart.

Squares are the only geometry
that makes sense to me,
graph paper the only part of
math class I liked, wasting
time filling in the
spaces with pencil, going
darker and darker, making welts
on the other side of the page,
creating designs
rather than correct answers.

Maybe if I hadn’t been so intent
on filling in the blanks, if I had paid attention
to circles and ovals,
to circumference,
I wouldn’t get so
disoriented here, wouldn’t be so dizzy.
Maybe if I had been receptive
to soft lines and curves
I wouldn’t be dependent on right
angles for navigation.
Maybe I’d
be able to make sense of the pulse, the unstructured sky,
the arterial overpasses.

Allyson M. Whipple read with us September 10, 2011, at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston. Allyson has recent work in Young American Poets; she founded literaryaustin.com in order to support the city’s thriving literary culture.

Remnants

What’s left are piles of clothes, some shirts, a gown.
On Sunday, late, the sale is winding down.
A basket filled with odds and ends. A pipe
my daddy carved, a knitted scarf, wool, still white.
A pink peignoir with feather trim seems lost—
It’s sultry sex had found no lovers crossed.
Painted china made by Momma’s friend,
who couldn’t paint, but Mom would not offend.
Good china, glass were not put on display—
My children wanted them so they were packed away.
The last car leaves, the remnants set to go—
A smallish pile remains, not much to show.
But in the end, is someone’s life defined
by what they’ve been, or things they’ve left behind?

Barbara Gregg read with us December 3, 2011, at BookPeople in Austin. With scientific articles and technical reports among her publication credits, Barbara has poetry in Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry, a recent release from Dos Gatos Press.

flowcakes

the small blond girl
asks her daddy
for flowcakes
the kind that fall
out of the gray cloudy
sky on winter mornings
wet and cold landing
on an outstretched tongue

her daddy laughs
and says we don’t get many
snowflakes in Austin, Cat

she furrows her brow
draws snowflakes on white paper
cuts them up and throws her
flowcakes up to the ceiling
watching them float to the ground
while she stands under them
mouth open
tongue out

Laura Peña read with us September 10, 2011, at the Blue Willow Book Bookshop in Houston. Current President of Gulf Coast Poets, Laura won third place in the di-verse-city anthology awards at the 2010 Austin International Poetry Festival.

Loquats

Grandfather,

somehow, the loquats
made it through the winter,
thumbs of fruit
held on.

The goldfinches that fed
all winter at the feeder
left before their feathers
lost the gray of winter.

The loquats got their color
just in time: waxwings
flock in the tree,
flash from fruit to fruit,
tearing as they go
ripe, orange flesh.

Somewhere, far away,
goldfinches
sing in the woods,
yellow and black
flash between trees.

Here, only leaves
quiver in the breeze.
Here, only green.
Waxwings—gone.
Loquats—gone,
orange,

scattered on the ground.

Gary S. Rosin read with us November 5, 2011, at the Twig Book Shop in San Antonio. Program chair of the Houston Poetry Fest, Gary has work in or forthcoming in Concho River Review, New Texas, and elsewhere.

Wolf Moon (January)

Brightest of any moon in years,
blazing cut-out against the blue-black sky,
its small sidekick Mars, a pulsing orange firefly.

We stand shivering in the cold night
three days after your surgery,
watching the celestial display,
waiting for the dog to pee,
your larger hand enclosing mine

when suddenly a shooting star flashes,
streaks across so fast I have to squint to see it,
focusing all my energies on that one spot
where now there is only afterglow
and the small, fleeting radiance in my chest.

Patricia Spears Bigelow read with us at the Twig Book Shop in San Antonio November 5, 2011. Author of Midnight Housekeeping, Patricia has had recent poems in Sustaining Abundant Life: Women’s Prayer and Poetry, and Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar.

Winter Grackles

The grackles sag the wires suspended from the streetlights.
A parabolic unease replaces horizontal balance.
Others blossom in the pasture,
Then swarm to an old, withered ash
Defoliated from winter’s cold.
Now instantly fuller than summer, the old tree swells,
Bloomed black by the grackle nation,
A flock that would nest in an entire springtime grove.
Branches shatter as the culprits take flight.
The sky darkens, blackout worse than blizzard
As the swarm takes wing again.

Jeff Santosuosso read with us at the Twig Book Shop in San Antonio November 5, 2011. Jeff has poetry in or forthcoming in Hobo Pancakes, Wilderness House Literary Review, and elsewhere.