A 1990 letter from Sarah Cortez to Susan Klimczak sits in the Houston Public Library archives — quietly bridging worlds rarely seen together: Houston's Mexican American literary community, law enforcement, and lesbian organizing. Cortez herself would later become known as both a Houston police officer and a published poet. These overlapping identities weren't contradictions — they were Houston. #TexasHistory #HoustonHistory #ChicanoLiterature #TexasPoetry

A 1991 letter from Houston author Sarah Cortez to Susan Klimczak sits in the Houston Public Library archives — connecting threads of Hispanic American literature, Houston's lesbian community, and HPD policing in one document. Cortez would later become known as both a cop and a poet, a combination rare enough to stop you cold. Primary sources like this show how literary networks actually functioned on the ground. #TexasHistory #HoustonHistory #ChicanoLiterature #TexasPoetry

New at Last Grotto: "The Basilica of the Little Flower" by Jacob Friesenhahn
A century-old San Antonio basilica speaks in the first person, bearing witness to the city's transformation—from nuns who transformed hunger into song, to McDonald's golden arches mimicking eternity. The poem navigates the tension between sacred endurance and urban decay, asking "How long do domes of faith / defy time's growing gravity?"
Originally published in Texas Poetry Assignment, now republished at Last Grotto.
https://lastgrotto.net/posts/basilica-of-the-little-flower/
#poetry #contemporarypoetry #TexasPoetry #SanAntonio #ReligiousStudies #UrbanPoetry