Awakening
   by Jules Gates Jules Gates

Jules Gates is an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Angelo State University, where she is the director of the English Education program, and has worked with colleagues since 2002 on the annual ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton, conducting the conference interview with Terrance Hayes in 2009, and chairing the conference for 2 years when Mary Karr (2010) and Art Spiegelman (2011) were the featured writers. She is the faculty sponsor of Oasis, ASU’s student art and literary magazine. Dr. Gates has published poetry in Amarillo Bay, Blue Bonnet Review, Carcinogenic Poetry, Concho River Review, Voices de la Luna, and Visions with Voices. She has presented poetry and creative nonfiction at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference, the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers Conference, and the Langdon Review Weekend.


Our May-December romance
got hit by a blizzard
and the lake where I drowned myself
froze with you in it

You were not my Leonce
but I was an Edna
aching for what you used to do
and playing nursemaid to what you had left.

Come May, I woke up
and did not give myself to the lake
but did give myself
and have swum out too far.



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