The Zingara Project

Author: Lisa Hase-Jackson

  • Advent by Carol Barrett

    My mother prepares for winter
    Two hummingbirds
    Dally on the tip-top rung,
    Tomato trellis in patio garden

    Two hummingbirds
    Take in the crisp, falling air
    Tomato trellis in patio garden,
    A quiet, temporary lair

    My mother takes in crisp air
    Arranges winter coats
    In her quiet, temporary lair
    Thinks of my father, waiting

    She arranges winter coats,
    Wonders will she need them
    Thinks of my father, waiting
    His voice, his warm embrace

    She wonders will she need
    The books, the vases, teacups
    His voice, his warm embrace —
    She has enough to make it through

    The books, the vases, teacups
    Can go for another spring
    She has enough to make it through
    Look! Come watch the hummers

    What can go for another spring
    Can be boxed and sent away
    Look! Come watch the hummers
    Whirring, first snow on golden leaves

    Soon all will be boxed and sent away
    My father calling from the garden,
    Whirring, first snow on golden leaves
    My mother preparing for winter

    —

    Carol Barrett holds doctorates in both clinical psychology and creative writing. She coordinates the Creative Writing Certificate Program at Union Institute & University. Her books include Calling in the Bones, which won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Drawing Lessons from Finishing Line Press, and Pansies, a work of creative nonfiction, from Sonder Press. Her poems have appeared in JAMA, Poetry International, Poetry Northwest, The Women’s Review of Books, and many other venues.

     

  • Copperfield by Leslie Anne Mcilroy

    I was not afraid of my father,
    thin/frail/sick. Never saw
    him put a hole in the wall
    or heard him raise his voice,
    but I was young and that time
    he slapped me on the head
    was only once and I am
    sure I deserved it.

    I must have. I should have
    been afraid of the way
    he quoted Rod McKuen
    and signed his letters
    “never hurt intentionally”
    like it’s a fee ride as long
    as you didn’t mean it. As long
    as we are so sensitive, we cry.

    He cried and died, little
    rabbit man and his hat.
    And to this day, I can’t figure
    out why he matters. He mostly
    doesn’t. And, imagine dying
    that way, knowing even your
    kids don’t believe your
    sorrow. I am thankful he
    was not an a magician,
    just imagine that poor girl
    sliced in half.

    —

    Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize, the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize and the 1997 Chicago Literary Awards. Her second book was published by Word Press in 2008, and third, by Main Street Rag in 2014. Leslie’s poems appear in Grist, Jubilat, The Mississippi Review, PANK, Pearl, Poetry Magazine, the New Ohio Review, The Chiron Review and more.

  • Haunted Exchange by artist Nancy Ramsey and poet Channie Greenberg

     

    The memory of
    That which hasn’t happened yet
    Haunts more than spirits.

  • Please Help This Vet by Gianna Russo

    Red light at the corner of Hillsborough and Florida Avenues

    His sign’s propped by his VFW cap.
    I’m muttering at the red light.
    Clouds are grey bellies slung over the belt
    of cityscape and wind swipes the street,
    riffling his long grey hair, pages of his paperback.
    It might be Going After Cacciato or Catch 22.
    A face that battered, he may have seen Saigon that last day,
    Americans swooped from the hotel roof,
    copters returning like jittery swallows.

    I was too young for sit-ins, the Washington march.
    I drew peace signs on my cheeks, teased my hair to a ‘fro.
    But the first poet I knew humped Hamburger Hill,
    sliced though bamboo like so many wrists.
    His poems were gristled with jungle beauty.
    He drank himself numb before every reading.

    Here, at the light,
    this vet sets back up his blown-down sign,
    hunches on the curb, glasses slipping down his nose.
    Should I believe the surrender of his tee?
    So hard to know about folks on the street,
    the broken sandals.
    What if I held out a dollar?

    Why do I ignore the wind-thrashed sky,
    his book pages flailing as I drive on by?

    —

    Gianna Russo is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Moonflower (Kitsune Books), winner of a Florida Book Awards bronze medal, and two chapbooks, including one based on the art work of Vermeer, The Companion of Joy (Green Rabbit Press). Russo is founding editor of YellowJacket Press, (www.yellowjacketpress.org ), Florida’s publisher of poetry chapbook manuscripts. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published poems in Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Apalachee Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, Karamu, The Bloomsbury Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, saw palm, Kestrel, Tampa Review, Water-Stone, The MacGuffin, and Calyx, among others. In 2017, she was named Best of the Bay Local Poet by Creative Loafing. She is assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, where she is editor-in-chief of Sandhill Review and director of the Sandhill Writers Retreat. 

  • Courting Wonder by Martina Reisz Newberry

    You have to be amenable to Wonder.
    You have to read the spaces between the words
    as well as the text and you have to see that
    where you step may be earth scattered over with
    a magic loess.

    You have to believe that hands as well as eyes
    let you see souls; lips as well as fingertips
    heal. You have to believe that the God of the
    White Tiger is the God of you, that demons
    live in every lie ever told, in every
    day of loneliness come to any living creature.

    You have to discern that a voice is a bin
    that holds, folds and releases tears, fury, glee.
    When you have faith in these things, astonishment
    will visit your doorstep and there will be an
    unstinting flight to your days, burning stars
    in your dreams.

    —

    ​Martina Reisz Newberry’s recent books: Never Completely Awake (Deerbrook Editions), and Take the Long Way Home (Unsolicited Press). Widely published, she was awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.

     

    Martina lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Brian.

  • The Last Train by Will Reger

    Sister, we are in an ancient place, that last
    station where the living change trains.
    Everyone comes here, tired of living,
    ready to lay it all down, ready to be done,
    or confused how they came here so soon.
    It is you with the transfer ticket, dear, not me.
    After you board I will travel on alone,
    swing back this way some other time.
    Your body jerks and rumbles with shut down.
    The train you need picks up speed.
    Everyone on the platform feels the power
    and starts to gather up their things,
    unaware — no baggage car on this train.
    I would gather you once more if I could.
    Your eyes are two pools of puddle water.
    A last light reflects in each, like hope,
    like the promise of Science or God, or like
    a star falling across the sky, sparking love.

    —

    Will Reger is a founding member of the CU (Champaign-Urbana) Poetry Group (cupoetry.com), has a Ph.D. from UIUC, teaches at Illinois State University in Normal, and has published most recently with Front Porch Review, Chiron Review, and the Paterson Literary Review. His first chapbook is Cruel with Eagles. He is found at https://twitter.com/wmreger — or wandering in the woods playing his flute.

     

  • Dia de los Muertos by Mel Goldberg

    Think of death
    as an old friend who will provide
    a place for your shriveled body

    Think of death
    as a sidewalk taco stand
    serving agua fresca in paper cups

    Think of death
    as the Iquitos airport,
    the open-air thatched roof lean-to.

    Think of death
    as a lover who whispers
    as you turn and look away

    Every relationship contains loss,
    every touch holds pain
    of death’s exquisite dreadful moment

    The words of death’s
    exquisite dreadful moment are contained
    in all the poetry in the world 

    *Also known as Día de Muertos, the celebration originated in central and southern Mexico. Those who celebrate it believe that at midnight on October 31, the souls of all deceased children come down from heaven and reunite with their families on November 1, and the souls of deceased adults come visit on November 2.

    —

    Mel Goldberg taught literature and writing in California, Illinois, and Arizona. He and artist, Bev Kephart traveled throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for seven years, settling in Ajijic, Jalisco. Mel has published on line and in print in The UK, The US, Mexico, and Australia.

  • 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.

  • Let Me Explain by F. J. Bergmann

    Center stage in the Theater of the Observed, who am I to say
    that my voice is pleasant or my manners abysmal? Or something
    cataclysmal: a nexus of disaster, like knots that form spontaneously
    in windblown hair, and you try to pass them off as incipient dreadlocks,
    but no one believes you.

    I’m reluctantly approaching the age when the light at the other end
    of the carpal tunnel is a hot flash of … of loss of memory or …
    or rage! that was it! when you find yourself in an existential backwater,
    indistinct drifting forms slowly decaying in the sick conviction
    of temperature gradients,

    saturated with the metameric violet of an interminable hour
    where the monitor screen radiates a sickly glare the ethereal hue
    of Himalayan poppies, flecked with rows of suspect symbols
    like maggots paralyzed in mid-writhe and just as capable of producing
    an itching, irritated brain.

    My soul is portable and an unpleasant shade of green that wants
    embroidering, which I take to mean ostentatious lying. I don’t know what
    to make for supper tonight—thinking of alcohol, but it’s too much trouble …
    so I’ll just recycle leftover bad moods that won’t invalidate the warranty
    on my liver and lights.

    And when that fails to delight, I’ll come up with an enhancement device
    to effortlessly trigger a slow roll into the next moment, temporary levitation
    resulting in a mysterious accident: a loud splash from the room next door,
    where you and your spotted dog run quickly to slip on that broken thing
    melting on the floor.

    —

    F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com) and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Work appears in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov’s SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. A Catalogue of the Further Suns won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest.