The Zingara Project

Month: October 2018

  • Elegy for Shura by Diane G. Martin

    “What is that beautiful game?”
    “It’s not important.
    All those who knew how to play
    are either dead, or have
    long since forgotten.” “Even you?”

    “Especially me.”
    “Is it ivory?” “Only bone.
    The ivory game
    was sold during hard times. Too
    bad, yes, but it matters

    not if no one plays.” “Teach me,
    Shura.” “I do not remember.
    And anyway, what is the point?
    Then with whom shall you play?”
    “I’ll teach someone else.”

    “Did you ever hear the one
    about the old Odessan
    Jew who drove to town…”
    “You can’t divert me so cheaply.
    Now back to the game. Shame

    on you for using such a ruse!
    I expected better,” I grin.
    “You ask too much; I’m dying.
    I’ve no energy
    for whims. So, join me at the sea

    again this year and then we’ll see.”

    —

    Diane G. Martin, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, has published work in numerous literary journals including New London Writers, Vine Leaves Literary Review, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Pentimento, Twisted Vine Leaves, The Examined Life, Wordgathering, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Poor Yorick, Rhino, Conclave, Slipstream, and Stonecoast Review.

  • Teeth by Sara Eddy

    The neighbors’ child wanders into my yard
    unannounced to play on the old swing set.
    I know her mama will be along, but I go out
    with a sigh to make sure she doesn’t
    break her head or wander further.
    I say hello.
    She doesn’t answer; she is full of beans
    and evil intent–she is like Loki’s best girl
    and she needs watching carefully.
    I say whatcha doin today
    and she sucks her lips into her mouth
    around her teeth
    preparing for something, sparking
    her eyes at me like she’s ready
    to leap at my throat
    I take a step back as
    she pulls those lips apart and holds
    them gaping with her fingers
    exposing her fangs
    so she can threaten me with the real reason
    she has ventured to my yard:
    a loose tooth.
    She puts her tongue against it and pops
    it toward me, letting it hang on a thread
    dangling like a dead mouse by its tail.
    With a wave of nausea I leave her
    to her trickster god’s care
    and scurry to the house
    feeling curious distress. Why,
    why are teeth so upsetting when
    they aren’t in our mouths? Fallen out
    teeth and punched out teeth
    pulled teeth and rotted teeth
    the roots of nerve and blood
    going back perhaps ages and ages
    to when this would be a death sentence:
    You lose your teeth, you cannot eat, you die.

    —

    Sara Eddy is a writing instructor and tutoring mentor at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Her poems have appeared recently in Forage, Parks & Points, and Damfino, along with Terrapin Press’ anthology The Donut Book.  She lives in Amherst, Mass., with three teenagers, a black cat, and a blind hedgehog.



  • Market Day by Erinn Batykefer

    I must believe not to move is to be more easily found.

    At the vintage junk-trader’s stall, I pulled
    a ribbed Fire King bowl from the bowl it nested in

    and the ringing did not stop.
    The market turned a maze of buzzing edges,
    the flower stall’s nasturtiums jerking on their stems,
    the bowl’s opalescent sheen in the air, seizure-white.
    I must kneel at the door with hairpins and toothpicks, dig
    the ghost fennel from the keyhole.
    I carried the ringing bowl through the stalls—
    husk cherries and small split plums; raw sugar and salvia,
    summer squash, but never again nasturtiums—
    its empty mouth a strobe-drone, leaping like halogen.
    I must inscribe a circle in the dirt: market, river hills;
    I must sweep the St. John’s wort from the linens.
    Years I lived with a shadow stepping into my footprints—
    going home took a long time, every alleyway echoing

    come haunt me again.
    —
    Erinn Batykefer earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of Allegheny, Monongahela (Red Hen Press) and The Artist’s Library: A Field Guide (Coffee House Press). Her work has appeared recently in Blackbird, Lockjaw Magazine, Cincinnati Review, and FIELD, among others. She works as a librarian in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  • AppleSong by Terry Savoie

    1.

     Succulently sugared Annas tucked in snuggly against a peck
    of blushing Empires who, in turn, are fitted alongside
    Grannies, sharp-tongued, in their tight, tart skins;
    Gravensteins & Northern Spies push forward bright-
    bosomed & rosy-cheeked while Winter Bananas wallow
    in their amber-lemon syrup which will never fully explain
    the glow on the soft skins worn by Golden Russets, odoriferous
    to be certain, brushed over with girlishly cream-coated flesh;
    the Hawkeyes & Pipins & Winesaps, gentlemen from two
    centuries past, so wise, say some, far beyond their age,
    have now turned into the naughtiest, the plumpest slices
    for pie fillings then they are joined by the polished, intoxicating
    Gordons & peck on peck of sprightly Permains thrown in alongside
    a bushel of Black Spurs, their sugary tones so radiantly fulsome, so… 

    2.

    Asleep: in
    their one
    ripe season,
    apples are
    packed in
    tightly &
    tucked
    in straw,
    in crates,
    in the cold
    cellar, safe
    & silent,
    sleeping
    away their
    days un-
    til they’re
    summoned
    to the kitchen up-
    stairs to serve
    the Mistress’s
    sweet purpose.

    —

    Terry Savoie has had more than three hundred and fifty poems published in literary journals over the past three decades.  These include The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review and North American Review as well as recent or forthcoming issues of  American Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review among others.  A selection of poems, Reading Sunday, recently won the Bright Hill Competition to be published Spring 2018.

  • Charming by Laura Cherry

    To get to you I bit the apple
    at its loveliest spot, drawing the poison
    out and into me. I lay in my glass box,
    neither sleeping nor swooning, neither
    half empty nor half full, every nerve
    edged in black like a mourning letter.
    What the doves call song I call grief; but
    I waited.
                     Your charger found me first,
    nosing at my coffin, transformed
    from battle steed to foal by the scent
    of apples. You swung the hinged lid
    slowly: one last moment to fear
    my heart’s desire, all my new kingdom
    in your kiss.
    —
    Laura Cherry is the author of the collection Haunts (Cooper Dillon Books) and the chapbooks Two White Beds (Minerva Rising) and What We Planted (Providence Athenaeum). She co-edited the anthology Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press). Her work has been published in journals including Clementine Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review, Cider Press Review, and Hartskill Review.

  • Running With The Wolves by Bruce McRae

    An hour of joy, an ounce of sorrow.
    This monumental moment, in part and in whole.
    I’m being touched by moonlight, so a little bit mad.
    Moonstruck and nightblind. Gone the way of the wolf.
    I’m lying in a loony half-light and recounting the myths,
    the stories we tell ourselves in order that we might carry on.
    Meaning imbued over coincidence. Memories shorted.
    The past redacted and redressed, so all is calm.
    You can put away those nerve-pills and quack confections.
    You can rest easy. Write a poem. Go whistle.
    A full harvest moon, and you can see into the darkness.
    You can sail that moonbeam over the shallows of paradise.
    Hang tight, my passenger, it’s full on into morning.
    —

    Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are “The So-Called Sonnets” (Silenced Press), “An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy” (Cawing Crow Press), and “Like As If” (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.

    Read these other poems by Bruce on Zingara Poetry Review: “Hinting at Eternity,” “Making Do,” and “Stop the Clock.”

     

     

     

     

  • Insomniac by Danielle Wong

    They called us destructive—
    tiny, wild animals
    caught up in cheap candlelight and
    high on back-alley weed
    or inky Pinot.

    Soured sweet memories of
    glimmering nights out and
    stolen weekends spent
    begging for the keys to
    your parents’ Chevy.

    The rare times they agreed
    were the best days—
    the only days
    worth all that
    trouble.

    We’d drive (and fight) and
    drive until we couldn’t even
    find our way back to that
    stuffy garage in your
    unnamed city.

     I swear you made
    my heart quiver
    when you sang
    slowly—
    the soft rhythm of your
    voice after a cherry-lipped kiss.

    Sure, there was that time
    when I broke your laugh
    and you cracked
    my heart into splintered shards…

    It just always seemed so
    pure—that addicting war we waged.
    The honesty of it, the
    unfeigned tenderness of it.

    The ineffable
    brilliance
    of you and me.

    —

    Danielle Wong is an emerging author living in San Francisco. Her debut novel, Swearing Off Stars, was published in October. Her work has also appeared on several websites, including Harper’s Bazaar, The Huffington Post, and USA Today. Beyond writing and reading, Danielle loves traveling, running, and watching old movies.