Angélique Jamail's Blog

Friends, I cannot tell you how absolutely gobsmacked I was this weekend at my book launch. It was fabulous in every way! The audience was marvelous, and Blue Willow Bookshop did their usual excellent job of hosting. I promise to get some photos up on my social media this week. And after going full-tilt for the last few weeks in preparation for the launch, dear reader, I needed to decompress. So yesterday, I took the day off; the most strenuous thing I did was get a pedicure with ay aunt, an annual tradition we have, and wow it was worth the wait. But now I’m back at work, ready and raring as it were.

I truly appreciate the gracious patience people have given e regarding this year’s Poem-A-Day series. The fact is, I have a day job too, and I just couldn’t do All The Things in the hours we actually have in any given day. So this year, out of necessity, I’m doing what a handful of people have been asking me to do for years, which is continue the National Poetry Month celebrations into May. So here we are!

Tonight enjoy “Uilebheist bheag / Little Monster” by Kendra Preston Leonard from her chapbook Grab.

Uilebheist bheag / Little Monster

On that small far island
where the sea-beast from colder waters
blocks the high lamp and stars both
where the wind is a beast,
a monster is among the primroses.

A stalker, redolent in gore and flower all the same,
he follows; though you may cross
cold flowing water or salted doorway, he comes,
carrying errant strands of horsehair and
meadowflesh.

Against the cold and wild rain,
let him in, let him warm by the fire,
give him the dogs’ old sheepskin.
In morning he will go again,
hunting your vermin to clear his debt.

Kendra Preston Leonard writes about music, movies, gorgons, werewolves, Shakespeare, feminism, nature, ghosts, disability, drama, race, paleontology, and much more. As a librettist and lyricist, her collaborations with composers and performers tell stories about empowerment, resilience, and compassion. Recent premieres include the operas 
Neither Created Nor Destroyed with Rudman, commissioned by ENA Ensemble; and Waters Rising
 with composer Tim Hinck, commissioned by Arts Capacity and created in partnership with the inmates of Walker State Prison in Georgia. Leonard is the award-winning author of three books of poetry, 
Making Mythology (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020), 
Grab (Red Ogre Review, 2023), and A Registry of Omens (Red Ogre Review Books, 2024); and a novella in verse, Protectress (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Trained as a musicologist, she has written numerous scholarly books in addition to poetry, plays, lyrics, and libretti. 

Visit her online at kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org.

It has been a verrrrrry looooooong time coming, but finally I have a new website. This one was designed and executed by the most excellent Kara Masharani. Now when you go to www.AngeliqueJamail.com, you will see something beautiful and not a mess. Yay!

Thank you, Kara. I can’t wait to hear your ideas for revamping Sappho’s Torque this summer!

This evening from 7:00-8:00 central time, I’ll be the guest interviewed on Living Art on KPFT, Houston’s 90.1 FM. You can tune in live on the radio or streaming at kpft.org, and you can probably also find it archived there later.

This should be fun! This is a longer interview than I’ve normally done. Hopefully I won’t babble.

I ran across Harry Baker, a spoken word poet, on Instagram and really like what I’ve seen of his work. In particular is this one poem, which is apparently highly requested for weddings. I can appreciate why. Give this one a look to be reminded of good in the world.

View this post on Instagram

I’ll let you click through to see more about him and his work on Instagram.

I’m jumping in here with some interesting news and a request. On Wednesday, April 29th, I’ll be interviewed on the radio program Living Art for their full hour-long episode, in advance of Stray‘s launch the following Saturday. I’m excited about it, for sure! And I’ve been interviewed on the radio several times before, but never for a full hour. I admit I’m slightly nervous about that. My goodness, whatever will I talk about for so long?

Actually, therein lies my request. What do you want to hear me talk about? Do you have any questions or topics you’d be interested in hearing about? The subject of the show, as its title suggests, is art and its influence on and role in life, and we’ll be talking about my work as well. So what are you curious about?

You can hear the program live on KPFT (90.1 FM if you’re in Houston, or stream it here). We’ll be airing from 7:00-8:00 p.m. central time Wednesday next week.

Between school (which is very busy right now), marketing ahead of my book launch (on May 2nd), and the book tour which has already begun (appearances started April 11th), I have decided to give myself a little grace and not worry about posting a poem every day. Yes, there will still be thirty poetry month posts. But they might continue into May. (I have often been asked to continue this series through May, so we’ll see how this goes.)

Tonight’s poem is by Paige Poe, a young poet with a fun voice and a strong literary pedigree. “Digital Hellscape,” which is both biting and amusing — as all the best satires are — was first published in Troublemaker Firestarter Issue 777 (2024). Enjoy!

Digital Hellscape

And so it came to pass that the devil of our age
rose from the seven circles to the Cloud:
The Delicious Life Doesn’t Have to be Full Price!
the King of Hell’s email declares,
Enter your phone number for ten percent off
your immortal soul! And I figure, what the hell,
I never could resist a discount.
I thought I’d meet him at a moonless crossroads
to sign his book in bloodied quill,
but turns out he went fully remote after the pandemic
and only requires an e-signature.
How times have changed:
The Great Deceiver once went to Georgia to fiddle for a soul
and now his portfolio is mostly TikTok ads and
the website formerly known as Twitter
and computer viruses on porno sites.
There are lonely legions of demons in your area
just waiting to suck your
soul to eternal damnation!
God would modernize, too, but the angels
keep sorting their inboxes from last to first,
and they can’t figure out how to close their apps.
Hell has emptied into the ether, nets, and cables
while heaven circles itself like a broken printer boomer.

Paige Poe is a queer poet and artist based in Houston. She earned her B.A. in English and theater from Texas Christian University in 2018, and you can find her poetry in Pinky Magazine, Troublemaker Firestarter, Chaos Dive Reunion by Mutabilis Press, eleven40seven, and more. She also writes custom murder mystery games under the name Killer Parties. Find her online at paigegpoe.com and @paige_outofmybook on ig.

Ekphrastic poetry is one of my favorite forms, and I’m sharing more from How to Tend a Wall this month. Next up is Kelly Ann Ellis’s poem “You can go to hell and I will go to Texas, declared Sam Houston” is just an entirely too relatable delight. It’s based on Edward Hopper’s painting High Noon.

You can go to hell and I will go to Texas, declared Sam Houston
(after High Noon, painting by Edward Hopper)

Black door open, blue dress open, she waits
caressing one breast. You wonder if she waits
for a lover, but I no longer think like that.

No. High Noon might signify danger, as in
that old Western about a gunfighter, a flick
I barely remember. But this is Edward Hopper,

as in Night Hawks, so it might express
loneliness. Yes. I get that. But here in Texas,
High Noon can only mean one thing. It’s hot.

The blue of a cloudless sky is not beautiful blue
but merciless blue. The bright of the white wooden
house won’t be bright for long, what with drought dust.

It’ll settle, not blow in, since blowing requires wind. This
air is still as a lizard sunning on a brick. As still as a tabby
watching the lizard. Waiting. As still as that same cat, now dead,

having perished of heat stroke. Yes, this is simile, conceit, but it is not
hyperbole. You get it. That woman standing half-naked in the door is
half-naked because it’s hot, and in the door because it’s gotten hotter

inside than out, if you can believe it. Believe it. She’s not caressing
her breast, but wiping off the sweat underneath it. If there’s one thing
she’s not, it’s waiting for a lover. That can wait until hell freezes over,

which is unlikely, given the weather. No, she’s waiting for the Centerpoint guy
to restore her power. She is powerless. It’s hell. It’s Texas It’s July in Texas
And to think, it’s only July.

Kelly Ann Ellis lives and writes in Houston, TX, where she earned an MA in English Literature
from the University of Houston. A member of Poets in the Loop critique group, she is the co-
founder of hotpoet, a literary nonprofit, and the managing editor of its online arts journal,
Equinox. Her work has been included in several juried poetry festivals and has appeared in
various literary journals and anthologies. Her collaborative cine-poems were featured in the
REELpoetry Festival for three consecutive years, and her poetry was showcased in the Houston
Fringe Festival in 2019 in the music and dance production, It’s About Love. Her fiction placed
2nd in The Short Story Show‘s 2020 contest and was re-released in a “best-of” podcast in 2021.
Ellis was twice nominated in 2020 for a Pushcart prize, and her poem “Praise Song for Strong
Foundations” received an honorable mention from a WIVLA (Women in Visual and Literary
Arts) and appeared in their anthology The Fire Within: Poems, Stories, and Essays of Women’s
Resilience in 2026. Lamar University Literary Press published Ellis’s first poetry collection, The
Hungry Ghost Diner, in 2023, and will likewise be publishing her forthcoming collection, What I
Burned.

One of my first projects when I became the Director of my school’s Creative Writing Program was to institute a Poet Laureate. Two of them, actually: one from among the high school Creative Writing students and one from among the faculty and staff. The appointment lasts a year. So far, knock on wood, the project has been going well!

Each Poet Laureate’s job is to write poems that commemorate important moments in the life of the school. And one thing my dear friend and colleague Christa Forster has done recently is to comment, rather cleverly, on a recent dustup in entertainment news, particularly surrounding one Timothée Chalamet, of whose work she is a fan. (Admiration that is, I might add, well earned.)

Do you remember the flap about his comments during Oscars season? He made the remark that ballet and opera were things “no one cares about anymore.” (Obviously he is incorrect.)

(And just a side note: in Christa’s bio there’s mention of her recent one-woman show, Know the Place for the First Time. It was outstanding.)

Here’s Christa’s poem, crafted in ballad form with tightly measured and rhyming quatrains.

A Thank You Note to Timothée (A Ballad)

At UT Austin, Timothée
told Matthew what he thought:
“I won’t work keeping things alive
that no one cares about.”

Oooo-hoo-weeeee! The dancers rose,
The singers raised their cry.
The bloggers and the Times itself
came out to crucify.

They mocked him, tore dear Timmy down
when they should thank the man—
young though he is, he’s done far more
than all their whining can.

These arts are in the limelight now, 
opera and ballet—
Folks might Google tickets now,
might even go one day.

These arts need so much money.
The work these artists do
to earn a single spotlight,
to dance or sing for you—

so few will come to see them;
the tickets cost too much!
Ticket sales alone can’t fund
these shows. Nope. Not so much.

For hours audiences sit and watch
a language not their own,
or else no language but a one
few bodies ever know.

They’re boring, opera and ballet,
though sometimes they’re sublime—
but Timothée’s more awe-inspiring
almost every time.

He plays amazing characters,
makes meaning as he goes,
for fifteen bucks, not three hundred,
in words most people know—

well, thanks in part to subtitles
(yes, opera has these too)
but Timmy is more often clear
to me, and maybe you.

Christa M. Forster is a multidisciplinary artist and innovative educator based in Houston, Texas, celebrated for her unique fusion of literature, performance art, digital media, and music. Her most recent solo performance, Know the Place for the First Time (2026), received an Individual Artist Grant from the Houston Arts Alliance.

This poem, “Healing” by Mary Wemple, resonates soundly with me at this time in my life, when I can feel health concerns that were previously irrelevant making themselves less so. It reminds me that vigilance is one part valor and two parts movement.

“Healing” was previously published in Eunoia Review.

Healing

Time to glean this path to the mountain top.
I gain elevation,
I hail the sun.

At home, I hang a picture of it by my bedside,
held by a single nail.

The gale knocked me down,
but the glen revived me.

Age slows me,
but I lean in to the climb.

A gang of wolves howls back and forth.
I wait for this heart to crack open like an egg.

Mary Wemple is a poet, artist and creator of Words & Art, a reading and workshop series inspired by the art in Houston. She holds degrees in English and Studio Art from the University of Houston and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her poetry has been published in DiVerseCity 2015, Houston Poetry Fest 2005, 2009, 2014, Harbinger Asylum and she was featured in the 2014 Words Around Town! poetry tour lineup. Her art has been shown at the Inman gallery, DiverseWorks and Lawndale Art Center.

Dear readers, I know I haven’t posted much lately. You might be missing the Poem-A-Day series, and that’s fair. I miss posting them! But it was publication deadline this week for the annual anthology I and my high school Creative Writing students produce, and we have been crunched.

I’m thrilled to report that they were absolute rockstars throughout the last two weeks of this process, our book got to the printer on time, I picked up the galley proof today, tomorrow they will inspect it, and then the book will go into production and be ready in time for our launch on April 28th!

Also, this week is my oldest child’s 21st birthday, and we are celebrating this weekend. (Happy birthday, Han!)

I promise to get back to posting poems for you this weekend, and I promise also to catch up so you will still get thirty National Poetry Month posts from me.

Thank you for your grace.