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

…and how rare is it, rain, a lot in Brownsville, rain since early Friday, much like snow in the North when cabin-fever hits, especially in early February; here, in early July, with about seven deep weeks of summer to go, the rain is like snow, cabin-fever time …. But I go out: bike [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…out in the Oklahoma Panhandle, almost 50 years ago, I was moving some hay bales that had wintered under snow and rain.
Two other men were working with me, one out of Alabama called “Heavy,” and the other out of Texas called Bob. I was out of Miami’s suburbs, out of college and on [...]

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A reminder

A note to writers and those who appreciate the written and spoken word that the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center Writers Forum  will meet at 7 pm tomorrow night at the center, 225 E. Stenger St., in San Benito. Attendance may be light as it is the travel season, but previous experience says that [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…along 281, one of my favorite roads, highway of dreams and development and movement, I love it ….
…linemen stringing power lines for BISD High School Six, and I stop and say, “Hey! US electric needs will double in 20 years! Will there be enough power?”
A lineman, he on the ground, says, “Sure! Wind [...]

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from Gene’s Notebook
“Go shake the peach tree. There’s one more up high,
and I can’t reach it.”
I go outside, shake the branch and leaf-thick tree,
and the last peach falls to cracked earth and rotted (they ripen fast) peaches.
I pick up the fuzzy oval, bump into a branch, go inside, give it to her and she bites [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

And there to lie down in the lap of the late autumn evening
homey small-kissing on some crazy quilt mother made me
how is it with you when you go and our lives go unbraided
my heart go torn with the old wild grief
how is it you rise and I rise [...]

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A poem by Stan Raines

At seven years
The world was a whirl of trees,
Houses, stones, and fields.
Moving objects, alive,
Tumbling in the head.

The world needed fixing.
Summer paced it out.
Young hands drew it down.
Along the creek bed,
Between the houses,
Ancient blood in young veins
Marked the tread
Of flowing waters.

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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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From Gene’s Notebook
…went to Austin with wife/friend/companion/pal/partner/guardian of my solititude and guardian of my togetherness because she asked me to; she was an Obama delegate at the State Democratic Convention, and I now share two images ….
…the more than 12,000 people in the Austin Convention Center, EVERY face in Texas, EVERY language in Texas, and [...]

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A poem by Patricia A.

I gaze at the shore
in the distance
with its promise
of soothing rest
under the shade
of palm trees
that will shield my wounds
from the searing sun,
and its promise
of cold, fresh water
that will stir and wake
my flesh, my mouth.
I gaze at the shore,
so distant—and still
it stirs my mind
and wakes my soul.

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A project
Here is the second installment of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation. We are retaining the accents and spelling conventions of Fitgerald’s text in the hope that readers will adapt their reading to an older pronunciation.
If the first nine quatrains amount to introduction, then these eleven quatrains might be considered the [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

Setting this down for you to keep
(White snows deepen the white night)
When you are gone from me in sleep.
Still the night deepens and the deep
Muffles your face, the face of forms from sight
Setting this down for you. To keep
This human faith with you I steep
These words, and not [...]

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from Gene’s Notebook
sultry, hot morning, this one of the three longest weeks of the year ….
…and down by the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Sunday twilight at still-another anti-wall vigil, I felt like I was at a wake, funeral, burial …and the river, green bushes on the sides flowed on, chocolate-green …and the wall got closer and [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters
(for Robert Evans)
Sunburned and blonde the fresh insouciance,
That quarter of the solar year comes round
When some will keep and some will quit this ground.
Your leaving reaves us,
Leaves us less a lance.
Go where you will, you go with Fergus now,
Far from the deans, where minutes are not kept
Where sleep [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…continuing those never-ending moments, and they come faster and faster as my end nears ….
The man has a Marine cap. I say, “Former Marine?”
He leaps at me and growls, stopping short of hitting me, and says, “Never former, never ex, always a Marine!” Shoppers jump back at his growl.
“What war?”
“Three, WW Two, Korea [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…and the cat made its way along a wall near the Gateway Bridge fence, white cat, going west …. And I made my way east in today’s pre-dawn, though even before 6 a.m., pink and blue played with the eastern clouds - true dawn ….
I was pedaling to the airport to bid two [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
Steamy and humid out there on another Bob Dylan birthday weekend, Dylan and the Nunnayerbizness writers, nice, inspiring … supreme beings, moons ….
…and he’d been wanting to sell the seven red cattle, finally, and stick to pigs and chickens, much easier, and cheaper to feed …but the cattle are still around and hungry, [...]

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A poem by Stan Raines (revised)

I
Last week, from the left, at dark
Beams of blue farm light
Clearly danced in my eye;
I turned to the right,
And they died.

II

Two days ago, at sunset
A dove made of smoke
Gathered itself before me,
Rose, and dove straight down,
Through my eye.
III
Yesterday, in high relief,
The sun’s light became
Women of bronze, dancing forms
Whom I have [...]

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A poem by Melissa Zamora

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From Gene’s Notebook
…in a local club, two women and eight men sit around a table, drinking a lot of beer, all college people, some with Greek fraternity letters on caps; they’re part of the academic world, or were very recently. Friends all.
Then, in come two scruffy men, and one woman; they draw stares from the [...]

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The San Benito Cultural Heritage Coalition

is pleased to announce

Dr. Manuel Peña

and his new book

Where the Ox Does Not Plow

Please join us in a special reading/book-signing & reception:

Wednesday, May 21, 7:00 P.M. at the Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center

225 E. Stenger, San Benito, Texas

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A poem by Stan Raines

The hill’s intolerably long and steep;
I think myself a goat.
Perhaps it’s a mountain
Without the slenderest hoofhold.

I don’t look long for the top:
Pebbles, brown and brown,
Strike my eyes
Loosened by my crabbing hands.

From time to time I imagine
I am merely crawling,
All fours flat on the land,
Unable to raise myself-

That the mist alone, shining [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart
The way you used to stand among your peers,
Tetrasyllabic, vaguely Arabic, not Greek,
No commonplace like i, j, k would do
But only elemeno, sonorant, significant.
Of what, of course, I never knew
I thought you were involved (still do)
With pimento, an exotic fruit
Suitable for stuffing olives with.
Hence olive oil and fig trees,
Date palms, caravans,
Silken [...]

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From Gene’s notebook

…and there I am on my bike, corner of Boca Chica and Central Boulevard, looking at the $3.55 gas, looking at car upon car and truck upon truck, single person in each …. The heat builds, near 95 degrees; the southeast wind rips bank flags. Half the drivers in those cars and trucks [...]

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