The Zingara Project

Author: Lisa Hase-Jackson

  • Sound the Trumpet by Edith Friedman

    All hail the trash-talking bball players, high-voiced sixth graders,
    out on the courts this early summer evening
    I curve my bike through San Pablo Park.
    The city took the big oaks last year, but the fields are lush and broad
    and the sunset sky is full of treasure.
    Here at the border of have and have not
    there’s a shooting about three times a year.

    Four months since the last one took a grandfather to the ICU.
    We’re nervous, but we can’t live inside.
    At noon today the park was full for Eid al Fitr, prayers in the open
    a woman in a burqa walked down my block with her package of food
    then a family on bikes, dad and two little girls
    long handlebar streamers and flowered helmets.
    Flowing garments, people laughing,
    full plates on laps, smell of grilled meats.

    Tonight softball players race across the June grass.
    The scofflaw dog owners, out in force
    cluster deep in right field
    as the bright lights come on.
    Back home, praise the boy who unloaded the dishwasher unbidden
    now he’s lacing up basketball shoes
    bigger than dinner plates.

    The gleaming crescent moon clutches her drab mother
    but you always go back to the park.
    I say, don’t come home too late.

    —

    Edith Friedman is sheltering in California with her partner and two stunned and bored sons. Her work has appeared in Sisyphus Literary Magazine. She studies Writing at California College of the Arts.

     

  • Maybe It was Spring by Luanne Castle

    or winter
    and there were nine girls or seven.
    Certainly it was overnight church camp
    when we formed a second
    skin around Lacy
    with our fingertips.
    What happened wasn’t a dream unless
    a mass dream dreamed en masse.
    We were one organism,
    the skin we made stretched
    tautly like a drumhead, lifting
    up the girl Lacy, a musical offering.
    Our song flowed in and from us,
    all seven or nine, with Lacy the melody.
    But one of us must have felt an itch
    and discovered she was separate
    and, doing so, withdrew her touch.
    An epidemic followed
    from this undoing until Lacy’s body
    shared many points
    of contact with the floor.
    I remember looking under her
    just before and noting
    her two inches above it all
    though of course that is ridiculous
    because it wasn’t a dream.

    —
    Luanne Castle’s Kin Types (Finishing Line), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award.  Her first poetry collection, Doll God (Aldrich), was winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she studied at University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University.  Her writing has appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, Glass, Verse Daily, and other journals.

  • Hurt Friends by Max Reese

    this body of mine used to be
    all papercuts and scraped knees,
    beestung summers clinging to our heels and sunburn blushing
    across our cheeks;
    you showed up to the picnic with bruises and I thought nothing
    of it – clumsy boys will fall
    as they please.
    I never knew a home could be a gravesite until
    you moved away and the grass overgrew
    the porch steps.
    I wish I could have saved you,
    back then,
    but we were both so far away and so hurt
    we could never go back to our new skin,
    to the blackberry stained mornings
    when there were no broken bones,
    or hearts —
    only fireflies and cherry coke.

    —

    Max Reese is from Reno, Nevada, and currently attends the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a sophomore. Max is long-time, self-taught poet whose mother instilled a love of poetry in him from a young age.

  • Listening To Poetry That I Don’t Understand by John F. McMullen

    I sit in the audience
    and listen attentively
    trying to make sense
    of what the poet
    is reading.

    I wonder whether there is anyone
    who doesn’t understand what I write
    I think not because I write very
    clearly (or so I think).

    Others may write about important
    issues but in such unclear poetry that
    I am not able to grasp their meaning.
    Why is that, do you think?

    Is my lack of comprehension
    the fault of the writer or of me?
    Whatever?
    I clap anyhow.

    After all
    they clap for me.

    —

    John F. McMullen is a writer, poet, college professor and radio host. Links to other writings, Podcasts, & Radio Broadcasts at his web home, www.johnmac13.com, his books are available on Amazon (bit.ly/johnmac), he may be found on Facebook, LinkedIn & Skype as johnmac13 and he blogs at Medium — https://medium.com/@johnmac13. He is also a member of ACM, American Academy of Poets, and Freelancers Union

  • Today the dog is tired of me by DS Maolalai

    Today the dog is tired of me

    and all my writing
    poems. she comes
    and sits in the kitchen,
    with her tail banging
    and a growling cough. she doesn’t like it; my writing
    these poems in the kitchen – she likes walking
    and going to the garden sometimes. she’d be ok, I think,
    if for just once
    I’d write on the sofa. she could sit up
    next to me, curl her head
    in. I get my hands under
    and place her on the table,
    hoping for some inspiration,
    and go back. she grumbles to get down again
    and goes to bed grumbling.
    I look at her;
    look at the poems
    I’ve wrote, look out the window.
    perhaps
    we are both
    diminishing.

    —

    DS Maolalai has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)

  • All This Because of a Polish Ship by Jan Chronister

    On April 5 at 2:21 p.m.
    the first “saltie” arrives
    and Duluth joins the rest of the world.

    It’s been a long winter
    as it always is.
    Snow-blanket lies tattered,
    streets potted with holes.
    We actually have to worry
    about food thawing out in our cars.

    Flowerpots appear on porches,
    we find all the things
    we forgot to bring
    in last October, still-green
    Christmas trees found
    as far as we could throw them.

    —

    Jan Chronister’s full-length poetry collection Caught Between Coasts was published in 2018 (Clover Valley Press). She currently serves as president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. More about Jan and her work is at www.janchronisterpoetry.wordpress.com

     

     

     

  • Stay-At-Home Mom by Sabina M. Säfsten

    I did not go to work today. But, today was full of work.
    Today I have made a pizza, some muffins, and a hat.
    Also I made changes, friendships, rest, and thoughts, and also
    I ran errands. So many
    errands.

    I also worried about money, and time, and health, and family, and boys.
    Well, boy
    or rather
    the thought that I am loved by someone, and how foreign
    that idea still seems to me.
    But He says it is so. So it must be.

    I ponder such a curious idea, as I change her clothes, and help her with
    the most basic of needs
    and cheer her on when she takes a few steps in a row–
    and then I adjust her oxygen tank so she can
    breathe

    I sleep early, and wake up when I hear her
    crying. I wake her up completely; she can sleep again
    but only after
    pills water blanket nightlight
    oxygen tank
    and a video clip of her grandchildren
    sending their love.

    I tuck her in, return to my chair. I lean back,
    blanket around my shoulders. I start to dream of
    tasks, and chores, and errands and work and         school
    as the whirring of the compressor
    lulls me back to sleep.

    —

    Sabina M. Säfsten is a life-long poet who recently decided to make attempts to be published as an adult. Published as a child writer in multiple poetry anthologies, she took a brief 15-year haitus and earned an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in Family Science. She has since come to her senses and has worked as a professional copywriter for the past 3 years for various clients. She currently works as a writer for a financial education company in Provo, UT, where she lives with her 2 djembes, Daniel and Ebony.

  • Mad Love by Chuck Taylor

    to say a word for our common tabby cat,
    to say a word for Oliver, senile now,
    my friends say, inside always now too,
    after the latest flap with a pack of dogs
    chasing him to a hiding place it took
    three days for him to come out of,
    old gimpy arthritic cat who we found
    in the garage after we bought the house,
    cat who we named Spook at first because
    you rarely saw the ninja warrior streaking
    from the food dish we set under the
    ping-pong table, but now an old purrer
    of laps and sleeping on your head in bed,
    Oliver, who has chosen me, out of some
    cat irrational need, to love best,
    though I never feed, though I have a
    backyard dog I take for country walks
    and have never liked cats, Oliver, lumbering
    across the floor, those large doe eyes
    looking up in mad love, begging an ear rub,
    a neck scratch, Oliver, Oliver, you could love
    my good mate, the one who bathes you
    the one who pulls off your fleas
    and trims your nails–but no, it’s me
    and only me, could it be my fabulous
    finger technique?–come on, give in,
    the mute glowing cat orbs say,
    let me on your lap, take this broken
    love and learn to tolerate
    so you learn to love–
    for you are broken too, eh?
    and mad like me for love

    —

    Chuck Taylor’s first book of poems was published by Daisy Aldan’s Folder Press in 1975. He worked as a poet-in-the-schools and as Ceta Poet in Residence for Salt Lake City.

  • The Year We Learned about Tet by Gary Finke

    This morning, as if the past had unwrapped
    Its greasy sack of regret, I am describing
    How Cecil and I worked as punishment, how,
    After we swept floors and hauled trash to give us
    Humility we both needed, we were noisy with relief,
    And yes, pride that we’d finished ten hours
    For our case of petty, bad college behavior.
    Because it was February, we’d worked
    Something we called the “light shift,” returning
    Our tools in near-dark and standing, for once,
    Among men who worked each weekend at jobs
    They’d never foreseen as boys, laborers
    Who did what was necessary, the work
    We wouldn’t be repeating, not if we
    Used our brains to earn the future’s comfort.

    Those men huddled inside cars they idled
    Toward warmth, windshields clearing from the bottom
    In rising moons.  From the back of campus,
    It was sixteen blocks to where our friends were
    Already lively with beer and music,
    And whether it was the twilight cold or
    The simple solidarity of work,
    One car door opened as “Where to?” offer.
    The two of us crowded beside that man
    On a stiff bench seat, the heater full-blast
    On our feet while Cecil gave directions
    That stopped that driver early, spilling us
    Into the just-beginning snow two blocks
    From our Greek-lettered house, standing in front
    Of the cheap apartments where locals lived
    As if he wanted that maintenance man
    To believe we were not the spoiled sons
    Of distant fathers, able to manage discipline,
    Gesturing in the flurries as if he was already
    Enlisting, his war victim future so close he needed
    To celebrate our small, unimportant work.

    —

    Gary Fincke’s latest collection, The Infinity Room, won the Wheelbarrow Books Prize for Established Poets (Michigan State, 2019). A collection of essays, The Darkness Call, won the Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose and was published by Pleiades Press in 2018.

     

  • Two Girls Sit on a Patchwork Couch by Chloe Kerr-Stein

    Afternoons I visited her, and
    beneath the rainfall on her roof
    cotton blankets wrapped around us I
    drank in each of her syllables. She helped me
    find the right shape with my own tongue,
    giving my hand a squeeze when I got one right.
    Half my words were nonsense. She pretended not to notice.
    I envied her vocabulary, and hoped one day I would be able to
    jinx her with a word like inconsequential or trivial or barbaric and
    know what it meant. You’ve probably guessed I
    loved her. So I stuck around like the smell of
    mulch in her backyard. I remember she took
    me there once to smell the jasmine. She
    never minded when I pronounced the word wrong
    or forgot which flowers are feminine, so I thought she loved me back.
    Pity me. Imagine the
    quiet tears I shed when I finally
    remembered the shape of those words.
    She had helped me sound them out
    thinking they were for someone else.
    Time after time I practiced until the
    vortex of sound opened up to me and on
    Wednesday I told her I loved her and the
    xenial melody of her voice responded
    yes. That’s how you pronounce it.

    —

    Chloe Kerr-Stein will be studying Writing and Literature at UCSB in the fall. She has studied at the California State Summer School for the Arts and the Kenyon Young Writer’s Studio. She has been published in the 826 Quarterly, The Junkyard, and the Bay Area Book Festival’s Youth Poetry Anthology. 

  • A letter to M. F. K. Fisher about Thai leftovers in the morning by Ralph J. Long Jr.

    Mary Frances

    Six empty bottles stand witness to last night’s folly.
    I should be past mornings where alcohol fueled
    camaraderie brings pain and remorse. Cider, wine,
    brandy have left only the soles of my feet without
    complaint. The muted refrigerator light behind curry
    stained boxes pierces, even my eyes are part of the
    litany of distress. To soothe the morning, my friends
    want the full American: Bloody Marys, coffee, eggs,
    toast and bacon. I crave water, not the false reset of
    vodka. The sounds of percolation and frying turn my
    headache into a storm. I bless the soft rain that mutes
    the high-pitched calls of songbirds. I fight the warm
    allure of bed. Sleep must wait until suffering recedes.
    Hope lies in the leftover containers of larb with fish
    sauce and puckering lime; in tiny eggplants napped
    with Thai basil, and chilies and lemongrass nestled in
    noodles ready for a minute of microwave rejuvenation.
    If only recovery was as easy as pressing start.

    I’ll write about the Gravenstein blossoms soon,

    —

    Ralph J. Long Jr. is the author of the chapbook, A Democracy Divided (The Poetry Box, 2018). His work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Poeming Pigeon, The Avocet and the anthology Ambrosia: A Conversation About Food. He graduated from Haverford College and lives in Oakland California.

     

  • A Body in the Body of the Universe by Micki Blenkush

    When I went hungry, I slept less.
    Roused by hummingbirds at 4:00 a.m.
    to add sugar to my blood.

    Today, I rest to the luxury of dozing,
    wait for news of our survival.  Slow bleed
    of light around the shades,

    my mind’s graffitied chug
    like box cars on a train.
    That my skin cracks open feels significant.

    Forced air heat blasting through the vents.
    I buy jugs of distilled water
    to feed my humidifier, take too-long showers

    mouth agape, inhaling the steam.
    Persistent itch, abrasion with bullhorn,
    subcutaneous alarm.

    —

    Micki Blenkush lives in St. Cloud, MN.  She was selected as a 2017-2018 Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series fellow in poetry and was a 2015 recipient of a Central MN Arts Board Emerging Artist Grant.  Her writing has recently appeared in: Cagibi, Typishly, and Crab Creek Review.

  • Then…as Now by KL Frank

    Thought hands a world to you
    separate as a head on a platter.
    But shuffle awhile
    through damp new grass
    and warm wood chips,
    stumble over errant rocks,
    pocket a few illicit pine cones,
    recreate scenes of
    soaked papier-mâché drying,
    skewer miniscule starchy
    sugar lumps on sticks and sear
    over charcoal fires, or
    cook a few squashed
    indecipherable meat patties
    over propane until
    severed images recede.
    Now will become as then
    when right hand and left hand
    were joined at the spine.

    —

    Karin L. Frank’s poems have been published in various literary journals, such as the Rockhurst Review, the Mid-America Poetry Review, the North Dakota Quarterly and New Letters and in various science fiction venues, such as Asimov’s and Tales of the Talisman. No matter the genre, her poems speak women’s voices.

     

     

  • Loss by Sandy Feinstein

    I keep thinking I’ll be able to see in the dark,
    that moonrise or bright Venus will penetrate.
    Maybe if I wash the grit from the windows
    or open them in defiance of winter
    stars could burst through,
    shed light as they fall
    through earth’s indifferent atmosphere
    down, down down.

    Not so much as a flicker’s left for me
    from the arc of unplanned flights.
    Stars die out of the sun’s spotlight
    unremarked.
    Perhaps Palomar finds a skyful
    to name and number,
    mathematically account for each.

    Loss of a single light remains
    forever
    unmeasured,
    immeasurable.
    It’s not enough to know what stars do.

    —

    Sandy Feinstein’s poetry has appeared most recently in Maximum Tilt (2019); in the last three years, her work has appeared in Viator Project, Connecticut River Journal, Gyroscope, Colere, and Blueline, among others.

     

  • Spurious Claims by Mark Tulin

    The sidewalk healer witnessing
    in the house of spurious claims,
    preached faith and transcendence,
    promised miracles with each dollar
    dropped in the collection bucket.

    He gave simple answers
    to all of life’s complex problems
    into one magical moment,
    wrapped in a neatly-tied bow
    and delivered to your door.

    Believe in how the spirit works, he’d say,
    and give you the same line;
    the same worn-out phrases
    as he sermonized yesterday.

    He claims to be a partner
    with the all-knowing,
    a six-figured salesman
    who thumps the podium
    with a lunatic’s conviction
    without caution or delay.

    He’s a rainmaker
    who can’t form clouds,
    a fisherman
    who’s never cast a spinning reel,
    and as much as he kneels and bobs,
    he never could turn water into wine.

    —

    Mark is a former therapist who lives in California.  He has a chapbook, Magical Yogis, and two upcoming books: Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. He’s been featured in Fiction on the Web, Ariel Chart, Amethyst Magazine, among others.  His website is Crow On The Wire.