by John Goggin
I: Lore
Somewhere, out there, there is a box
Of gopher wood and cedar
Inlaid with royal porphyry.
It’s sealed with seven golden locks;
inside are golden keys.

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A history lesson
Editor’s note: This piece was run in it’s entirety in this month’s Harper’s Magazine. It is such a poignant statement, however, that we wanted it to be available to our readers in it’s entirety. This and other documents on the Soviet’s slow recognition of a reality outside its mythology and ideology are available [...]

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A poem by John Goggin
When they came, they came as friends
Blessed by the king, with new learning to impart.
We all prospered, it is true; grew fat, built new houses,
Mortgaged our futures, became blind.
Wondrous, wasn’t it?
When the wind shifted and a storm blew up,
In just a big city moment we were not so smart.
They pillaged to [...]

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by John Goggin
Memory is shards, just broken pots and bones hidden under the ashes, middens littering the shore of the common sea; memoir is mostly archeology.
From 30 some years ago…

One early March  afternoon, a raft of co-recreants is horsing around the big dining room table. Outside, it’s bitter cold, there’s rime on the branches, [...]

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A poem by Gene Novogrodsky
Within a minute …
The yellow-orange sun
Above the red-green-red-green
Traffic lights,
With the golden-haired transvestite
Waiting on a bench, chin in hand,
Last customer a hope,
And the chubby whore leaning
Against a cab, man next to her,
Him a hope,
And the plasma-for-money line, long around the
Trashy block, and down another,
Migrants, coming/going,
Buses empty, buses full,
And the lights, on and [...]

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A note from Virginia Gause
Edinburg – The Edinburg Chamber of Commerce in lieu of The Edinburg Centennial will host “A Story of A Town”, an art exhibit featuring local, national and international artists. The exhibit will be on display from October 5th-10th for public viewing at the Edinburg Chamber of Commerce Depot, located on [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown
(for Warren Vanderhill)
The girls who lived in old Lucina
Just west of where dear brazen Benny stands
Were majors all and cognate in their minors,
All lovely-limbed and loyal to sundry lands.
All blonde and browned from days of endless summer,
They laughed and chaffed their carefree youth away
And quoted gravely there their mentors’ [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown
(for Garnet Drown Bertram)
In Lindley Park Cemetery
The tourists are attracted there,
Treading softly, carefully,
Reading what the stones declare:
Beneath this stone are my son’s bones
Drowned in the Yellowstone.
The Twee, the Doon, the Yellowstone,
These deeps that fill the cemetery
Age upon age of runéd bones.
The wash and ruck are silted there,
The Wapahani and [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown

making the Huey noises again
James is jacking with Harry’s brain
which is already fried
because Harry died in Da Nang
but James is in pain
James who carries a sack of pills
uppers downers buffalobills
is making the Huey noises again
jumps off his stool into the paddy
yelling INCOMING making the hum
coughing & spitting and taking [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown
(for Tammy Meyer)
I did not come this south to north for growth,
No north roots pulled me, no, nor northern home,
No tinseled dreams seduced me from the sun.
The truth is plainly albumed here, for both
Were happy where we were and where from.
We were content enough when dawn, begun
By macaws screaming [...]

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A poem by Stan Raines
Did he say to me
before he called
“Do you want to come?”
There was peace I had sought
Away from the ruck and fervor
OF loving sisters
Always the service and fetching
The ointments in my distress,
So soothing at the touch,
The meals and pampering
But also
The distress of living
The stench all cry against
The bickering cries of houses divided
And [...]

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A note from Stan
Daniel García Ordáz, aka The Poet Mariachi, appeared on Channel 23 News to promote his reading series this weekend in McAllen. Take a look.

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KÚZA-NÁMA

LIX
Listen again. One Evening at the Close
Of Ramazán, ere the better Moon arose,
In that old Potter’s Shop I stood alone
With the clay Population round in Rows.
LX
And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried-
‘Who is the Potter, pray, and who is the Pot?’
LXI
Then said another-‘Surely not [...]

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A thought from Stan Raines
I was standing in line at HEB yesterday and the man in front of me, someplace in his fifties, mustachioed and trim asked me how I was and I gave him my usual non-commital “Doin’ fine” and returned a “How you doin’?”

“Ah, you know,” he said, “another beautiful day in Brownsville.” [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…smoky, smoky enough for choking, the grills, the barbecue grills, some with charcoal, some with wood, some with gas …
…always men, little boys to old men, circling the smoke, women away, unless one comes by to ask an unwelcomed question …
…the smoke, so thick, the men, shadows in the smoke, the fires dim, [...]

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- Y -

It may be all movements through time are like dance
steps, but sometimes the tempi,
The patterns seem random, seem to us frantic,
confuse us and lose us
In rhythms that stutter and stumble, carry us off
of our footing.
Fitting that you, then, pentultimate letter, occasion
reflection.
Slow down the score to molto adagio, make the mood
pensive.
X in proximity’s like [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart

Fling me around if you like. You’ll find that I’m able
To land on two feet, like a bipedal cat.
I’m steadier than you are, more stable,
But you can count on little more than that.
For I am not a cat, at least I’m often not.
I’m like the headless, tailless quadruped
That even thoughtful Dr. [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart
- T -
I for one do not appreciate the joke
Of those who say that Tau is just a bull.
Note how the horizontal stroke
Runs parallel to earth, arrests the upward pull.
Of aspiration, drags us down. What son of man
Among us dares to cast this frightful yoke?
I think the letter T
Leaves little room [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart
— S —

S is more or less what C would be
When c is not in Church
Or not being k.
Ever since its sinuosity
Slithered through the garden,
Man has leaned to speak
In conspiratorial whispers.

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Wherein the Poet Relates a Visitation and Elucidates His Theme
XL
You know, my Friends, how long since in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
XLI

For ‘Is’ and ‘Is-not’ though with Rule and Line,
And ‘Up-and-down’ without, I could define,
I yet in [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

BUBBLES THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, led
to believe her concrete block demesne
surrounded by barker and cagéd cat
was of her natural habitat
unchanging and forever green,
is dead.  Beloved, she fell asleep,
o.d.’ed like a teen-ager in the park
she slipped into the surrounding darkness
deaf to the midway midgets’ weeping,
the sorrow of keepers who [...]

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A Poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(for Joseph Satterwhite)

I

If at the whole year’s nooning and the noon
Of days, at the still daylight hour I am begot
Of fleshéd bones, death, darknesses, of doom
The which I pray Thou sparest me, what-not:
If at the whole day’s nooning and the year’s
Day, and the bright hour [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(For Carol and Jerry Kasparek)

Amasis was in Egypt king
(Whose dwelling ran a measured mile)
The upper and the lower Nile
Long ago
Whose women when he bade them sang:
The desert boogied, heaven rang,
The painted women and their men
Congoed kickshaws then and ran
In circles to the throne again
(An awesome sight
All [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

A winter thaw opens the children’s coats
And bursts the locks on schoolyard fences,
Disturbs the sluggish chucks; the stoats
Pursuing the nights on their private fancies
Are vicious with laggards, fond of a chance,
Like our children in their baffle, kiting
In dives, the wind-hovered swallows chirking
Over your crossed churchyard. Sighting
Down the [...]

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A poem by Rudy H. García

I listen to the River,
Because my body is molded with its fertile clay
My blood mingles with its rejuvenating water,
Cleansing my spirit free.
I listen to the river
Because I hear over and over from the Eagle and the Jaguar
That the name is El Rio Bravo…The Brave River
I too am brave.

I listen to [...]

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