Signal
Texas dawns humid
green anole at my feet skims
hot deck planks
pink dewlap
pulses orchid
throbs crimson
anole gutters
along downspout
adhesive toepads
cling
release
skitter
lust
out of view
in caliche cactus wood chip garden
When sun enough has ignited the sky
I call my mother in California
We laugh about how often we name upstairs
and down as recent destinations
Not beach or river downtown or lunch gym
84 she no longer drives; Covid she stays home
I order for both of
green anole toenail polish palette
Paint mine red predictable
pad out to the deck signal
Orchid my mother plants herself in the lupine bougainvillea
fuchsia gumweed garden at the cliff
Sea foam sketches the deserted beach
Blue whales
scoop krill
crack the Pacific surface
migrate south to Mexico
Jane Hammons
Jane Hammons taught writing for three decades at UC Berkeley, where she received a Distinguished Teaching Award. Upon retirement, she moved to Austin, Texas, for five years before returning home to New Mexico. Her writing appears in numerous journals and anthologies: Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Main Street Rag, Yellow Medicine Review, Hint Fiction, (Norton), The EastOver Anthology of Rural Writers of Color, 2023 and 2024, The Maternal is Political (Seal Press), and Selected Memories, (Hippocampus Books). She enjoys photography as part of her writing practice, and three of her photographs are included in Taking It To the Streets: A Visual History of Protest and Demonstration, an exhibition of the Austin History Center. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
