The Zingara Project

Author: Lisa Hase-Jackson

  • Blue Sky Day by Tom Evans

    It sometimes amazes me
    On a crisp sunny blue sky day
    Like today,
    That when a policeman passes me
    On the sidewalk and says ‘hello,’
    And makes me feel like a normal person,
    That he hasn’t seen
    Through me, and recognized
    Me for the imposter I am.
    But how could he know
    When I dress myself in decent clothes,
    My workplace just around the corner,
    In this small town where everyone
    Knows everyone,
    That I don’t belong,
    Terrified of being found out
    At any moment?
    And I am extremely grateful
    He lets me go on my merry way
    To make it through another workday
    Though I’d rather be anywhere else than there
    On a crisp sunny blue sky day
    Like today.

    —

    Tom, a librarian living near NYC, has recently had poems and stories published in Litbreak and Tuck Magazine, poems accepted in the Ann Arbor Review and Wilderness House Literary Review, and a first novel due out in October from Black Rose Writing.

  • A Flower Rests by Jerry Wemple

    Daisy rose later in the morning each
    day until she barely rose at all. Ark
    was left to get his own breakfast: peanut
    butter smeared on doughy bread; a pale
    apple in a paper bag to take for school
    lunch. He would shuffle down the slate sidewalks
    parallel to the river street doing his
    best to slow time and the inevitable.
    After school, the return trip home and sometimes
    there deposited on the couch in front of
    a blurred television his mother
    like a monument to a forgotten
    whatever. Sometimes she would cook supper and
    sometimes not. And sometimes the old neighbor
    woman would stop by and say mind if I
    borrow you boy for a while and then sit
    him at her kitchen table and stuff him full
    on greasy hamburger and potatoes
    and sometimes apple pie that was not too bad.

    —

    Jerry Wemple is the author of three poetry collections: You Can See It from Here (winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award), The Civil War in Baltimore, and The Artemas Poems. His poems and essays have been published in numerous journal and anthologies. He teaches in the creative writing program at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

     

     

  • Grading by Maryfrances Wagner

    We’ve watched
    the moon sag
    into tomorrow,
    ready to set down
    our pens.
    They argued
    their case,
    we ours—
    more detail,
    another example,
    better verbs.
    We’ve stroked
    our chins, pulled
    our earlobes,
    shifted our feet.
    Ink glides its
    well-oiled
    ball bearings,
    eager to praise
    a phrase,
    to find
    a moment
    of thought.

    —

    Maryfrances Wagner’s newest book is The Silence of Red Glass.  She is co-editor of the I-70 Review.

  • no consensus reached by Sanjida Yasmin

    four Fridays later, six
    bloodshot eyes confront
    eight boxes of hand-me-downs
    & that one house sparrow with
    the black goatee & white patch—
    startled by the shattered glass

    yesterday was about moving
    ten years from floor two
    to floor four—
    a good work-out

    today, the dusky dawn is
    filled with a goose egg;
    the fat house sparrow
    chirps a question

    followed by another starless night
    & when the goose egg finally sets,
    the sparrow & the owners lose
    pulse of the feathery momentums.

    —

    Sanjida Yasmin is a poet, writer and an artist who lives in the Bronx, New York. She splits her time between the Long Island Business Institute, where she teaches English, and St. Dominic’s Home, where she provides therapy and finds inspiration for her work. Her poems have appeared in print and online journals, among them are Pink Panther Magazine, Peacock Journal, The Promethean, Nebo, Panoplyzine, Poetry in Performance and Anomaly. She earned her MFA degree from the City University of New York.

  • On the Eve of Roberto Clemente’s Third Miracle by Michael Brockley

    He knows he could still drive Warren Spahn’s curveball into the right centerfield power alley. But he has moved beyond batting crowns and Hall of Fame inductions. Beyond the pleas of hospitalized boys who have read too many comic-book biographies. His intercessions restored a cloud forest in Costa Rica. Brought water to those who thirsted in Haiti. Still the earth is heavy with its old grief. Clemente knows there are brown men and women adrift in a sea where slave ships once disappeared. Knows the desperation of lives lived on the cusp of earthquakes. His miracles are burdened by the evil that creeps through chastened villages in limousines. His supplicants no longer pray in the language of the blessed. Their fears pulverized beneath churches crushed into shell-game stones and homes replaced by ghosts. The Great One has always known the ground rules. Purposeful in the face of another sacrifice, Clemente rubs pine tar into the handle of his Adirondack bat. He knows the plane is overloaded with mercy, and climbs aboard again. 
    —
    Michael Brockley is a 68-year old semi-retired school psychologist who still works in rural northeast Indiana. His poems have appeared in Atticus Review, Gargoyle, Tattoo Highway and Tipton Poetry Journal. Poems are forthcoming in 3Elements Review, Clementine Unbound, Riddled with Arrows and Flying Island.

  • Dwell by Gabrielle Brant Freeman

    Shoulders shake beneath my pressing palms, you angel
    of tangled blades and skin, you angel of need, of voice
    that leaps from skies slippery in stars like thunder.
    Outside, Spanish moss fringes in wind on its way to water,
    clutches at crooked trunks, at crooked branches stripped
    of leaves. Beneath me, you are made flesh, fallen in psalm.

    Hands slide down my smooth sides, fingers press praise
    into skin. Outside, the river rolls on as though you, seraph,
    are not burning here, as though your touch does not strip
    me bare, as though I am not scorched by your voice
    as you lift it and speak my name out over the water,
    as you cry out over the current, as you call the thunder.

    Crash and Roar and Boom and Clap! Thunder
    rumbles up through us like the rising scree of cicada song
    after they unearth wet wings, cling hard to bark, bathe
    themselves in warmth. Belly to belly, we tremble. You angel
    of arms and heart, you light-bringer. You voice
    the words that dismantle me, sacred words that peel, that strip.

    Love. Stripped
    down thunderbolt
    vocalization.
    Outside, green tree frogs squonk their night song,
    join the southern chorus frogs’ trill. Divine messengers
    heralding rain.

    There is the water of the river and the water of the rain,
    and, in the deep of night, there is only the brief strip
    before one becomes the other like heaven
    pushes into sky, the liminal space of sturm
    und drang. Urge and drive, we dissolve in symphony.
    You angel of pulse and breath, we are voiced

    together. Outside, the world turns soft into dawn, its voices
    change to birds and nattering squirrels. The river
    rambles, burbles around snags at its banks, sings its song
    eternal. We listen. Light filters through trees in strips
    that stripe our skin. The cat purrs like distant thunder,
    stretches in a spot of sun. This morning is splendor, you angel.

    May our voices flood this house forever. Storm and surge and strip
    and skin forever. Tide and lightning, blessed thunder
    bellow. May you kiss me into hymn forever. Make me an angel.
    —
    Gabrielle Brant Freeman’s poetry has been published in many journals, including Barrelhouse, One, Scoundrel Time, and storySouth. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2017 and won the 2015 Randall Jarrell Competition. Press 53 published her book, When She Was Bad, in 2016. Read more: http://gabriellebrantfreeman.squarespace.com/.

  • Enough by Mary Dudley

    It wasn’t the cantaloupe at breakfast
    or the blue bridge spanning the highway
    on our way to this retreat.

    It was the black-paper hawk warning the small
    birds in the russian olives just outside the window
    to stop before they hit the glass,
    no matter if the oranges on the table called them
    or persimmons.

    Life has its boundaries,
    the hawk said.  It is not
    always air and light
    and free flight over the arroyos
    into canyons.
    You enjoy such freedom you do not even know
    how free you are, how free you’ve been.
    Stop at this glass.  Here.
    You have space enough
    You have no need to come inside.

    —

    With an M.A. in American poetry, Mary Dudley then earned a Ph.D. in early child development. She writes about and works with young children, their families, and teachers.  She’s published three chapbooks of poetry and her poems have appeared in a number of collections, including Zingara Poetry Review.

  • Reverend Billy’s Boogie Woogie and Mom’s Gulbransen by Gianna Russo

    The Palladium Theatre, Saint Petersburg, FL.

    We’re here for the Hillbilly Deathmatch.
    Two balladeers duking it out:
    heartbreak vs. boogie woogie
    Les Paul guitar vs. Steinway Baby Grand.
    The Friday Night music palace seeps age and glory–
    rows of faded velvet seats, wooden backs worn smooth
    from decades of sweat and delight.

    The balladeer’s got the guitar: his fingerwork is a cheery stroll,
    his second-tenor-muttered lyrics walking us around the yard,
    down the block to the intersection of Heartbroke and Wanting More.
    We’re referees: our seat-shifting and half-yawns call it:
    no way is that round going to him.

    Then Reverend Billy stomps on stage
    in a cowboy zoot suit and kickass boots.
    He pounces on the ivories, his hands
    the tarantella, the electric slide, the St. Vitus dance of boogie woogie.
    We hoot and jive in our seats.
    It’s a musical K.O.

    God, it feels good to get shaken this way,
    after months of putting the house to sleep,
    forcing a coma on one room at a time.
    Rev says he want to slow it down, play somethin pretty.
    Melodic and melancholy, it takes me
    to my mother’s back room
    where her old upright Gulbransen sags unsold, untuned.
    She filled the house with show tunes and old standards–
    South Pacific, Annie Get Your Gun, her low alto tremolo.
    It’s been mute for years.

    Rev caresses the Steinway.
    Behind him the velvet curtains are crenelated, ballooned.
    Above him the stage lights are blue as my mother’s eyes.

    —

    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.

  • Home for the Wayward Trans Teenager Leslie Anne Mcilroy

    I would put a sign on my door,
    but the vacancy is already filled.
    So many young people with their “T”
    and almost-hair on their faces.

    I love these boys, these “they.”
    They are bottomless pits —
    pizzas and apple juice,
    dysphoria and binders.

    I only meant to have one,
    but one is connected to the other
    and the other, and it’s not that
    the parents are bad,

    just that it takes a long time
    to turn “she” into “he.” And,
    they change their names,
    call the name you gave them,

    “dead.” You donate the dresses
    to goodwill, throw out the photos
    of ponytails and purses. You say
    “dead,” too, to your daughter.

    It’s only six months and already,
    you are saving up for the double
    mastectomy. You only cry a little
    now, but mostly fold the boys

    underwear, pack away the pearl
    bracelet, correct your family,
    “she to he,” “she to he” and then
    wonder why they can’t just be gay.

    —

    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.

  • What We Leave Behind by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

    She appeared again today;
    the notch in her left ear
    was the same. Everything
    about her was the same
    except that she was dead,
    hit by a car in the road.
    I remember this deer
    from a month ago when
    she shyly nibbled an apple
    fallen from a struggling tree
    in my yard. So graceful
    an animal, natural
    and unpretentious, moving
    moment to moment.
    I wonder if she dreaded
    a universe that will go on
    without us in the future,
    as it seems we humans do.

    We leave so many marks—
    artifacts, photos, words,
    currency as if to purchase
    a place in history or keep
    our presence alive. We are
    a species attached to forever,
    but even with all our art,
    monuments, memories,
    diaries, sometimes eulogies
    so kindly and profoundly
    offered by those still living,
    the only thing worthwhile
    we could ever leave behind
    is our desire to be immortal,
    a will to survive, but whatever
    that drive is; in the end—deer,
    human—it really doesn’t matter
    as soon as the matter is gone.

    —-

    Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Clockhouse, AJN: The American Journal of Nursing, Mount Hope Magazine, the Jungian journal Depth Insights, Terrain.org, and others journals.  She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and has been an educator, researcher, editor, and is co-founder of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

  • Prairie Poem by Marc Thompson

    And one day I saw my life under the open sky
    and the open sky was orange and the wind
    came up from behind the trees that stood
    like sentinels before the mountains, and
    both trees and mountains were close enough
    to touch even though they were thousands
    of miles away.  It was the prairie grass that
    bent and swirled and bowed before the wind
    without yielding and that day I knew that
    when I was not the wind I would be the grass.

    —

    Marc Thompson lives and writes in Minneapolis MN where he keeps himself busy as the stay-at-home dad of a thirteen-year-old boy, writing poems, and doing volunteer work.  He has an MFA from Hamline University and his poems have appeared around the world in journals and in cyberspace.  He is the author of two chapbooks:  Ordinary Time (Laughing Gull Press) and Oklahoma Heat (Redmoon Press).

  • Directions Back to Childhood by Judith Waller Carroll

    Turn left at the first sign of progress
    and follow the old highway
    along the Stillwater River.
    When you hear the whistle of the train,
    take a right and cross the covered bridge
    that leads to the rodeo grounds
    where the silver-maned bronc
    caused so much havoc the summer you were ten
    and the ghost of your grandfather’s jeep
    rests behind the bleached-out grandstand
    choked with blackberries.
    As you round the corner into town,
    there’s a white picket fence
    laced with lilacs. Walk through the gate.
    You’ll see a blue and white Western Flyer
    lying on its side in the middle of the sidewalk.
    It will take you the rest of the way.

    —

    Judith Waller Carroll is the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award, The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize, and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press).

  • Two Women in a Yurt, After the Quake by James P. Roberts

    For Dr. Jatinda Cheema

    It is eerie, the silence that follows once the ground has finally settled.
    Displaced rocks roll to a stop and the trees slowly subside their almost musical sway.
    Startled birds nervously resume their plaintive song.  It is over now.  We are still here.

    Outside the yurt standing alone on the level plain, Mongush
    Has calmed the skittish horse while young Sadip looks on in aloof disdain,
    Arms folded across his thin chest.  Both are wearing winter garb: Bearskin
    Malgai with ear flaps, a thick nekhii parka, trousers, knee-high boots.

    Beyond, in the distance, snow-covered mountains sprawl beneath a blue sky
    Scattered with puffs of fleecy white clouds which merge with plumes of snow
    Blown off the highest peaks.  The baby girl, Samyan, cries loudly in her wooden crib.

    The yurt is undamaged.  A teardrop-shaped four-string tovshuur hanging
    On a wall peg remains intact.  The inner rim of the yurt roof is decorated
    With bright orange and blue designs, a parade of mandalas circumscribing good fortune.
    A prayer wheel spins around and intricately patterned rugs carpet the floor.

    Two women stand ground in the middle of the yurt.  The younger woman, Namesh, hides
    In the background while her mother, Suunyu, gazes steadily forward, her seamed face hard
    As granite. It is evident there has been a quarrel, still not ended, only delayed
    By the earthquake.  It will resume once the men have departed.

    This is a land of earthquakes: voices of gods.  An old land where mountains loom
    To dizzying heights, then fall steeply to be swallowed in trackless deserts.  Stories
    Told at night in the smoke of burning yak butter candles.  One looks up and feels
    The immensity of stars, blazing like the pitiless eyes of angry deities.

    The women are cautious, rife with knowledge handed down through generations
    Of the fragile relationship of things.  Centuries of secrets form in their eyes and worn faces.
    Beneath the traditional dresses they wear are hard bodies sculpted by wind, sun, and toil.
    Strong, ridged hands create tools, cook day and night, hold crying babies.

    These women even an earthquake cannot destroy, they simply endure.

    —

    James P. Roberts has had four previous collections of poetry published. Recent work can be found in Mirror Dance, Gathering Storm and Bamboo Hut.  He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he hosts a radio poetry show, ‘A Space For Poetry’, and has a passion for women’s flat-track roller derby.

  • Woodworking Lesson by Mike Zimmerman

    Again, I’m with my father in the wood shed:
    My aching wrists hold a rusted bucket of nails
    For him while he cuts two by fours. Soon I’ve shied
    Away, against a wall, as he saws, sands, and kneels
    For leverage. I’m not a very boyish boy. I’d rather
    Be in my room, I think, reading a classic, some Homer
    Perhaps, or sweeping up the kitchen, or helping lather
    Laundry with mom. But he’s picked up the hammer.

    “Hold some nails out for me,” he says, once he’s lined
    The first one up and tapped it. Then, forcefully, precise,
    He brings the hammer up and down until few are flush
    With the wood. “Now it’s your turn.” I feel my soft flesh
    against my thumb. “What if I hit my finger?” His advice
    is action instead: he places the hammer in my small hand.

    —

    Mike Zimmerman is a writer of short stories and poetry, as well as a middle school Writing teacher in East Brooklyn. His previous work has been published in Cutbank, A & U Magazine, and The Painted Bride. He is the 2015 recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award from Gival Press and a finalist for the Hewitt Award in 2016. He finds inspiration and ideas from the people and places he loves. Mike lives in New York City with his husband and their cat.

  • Stray Cat by Jenny McBride

    Victoria park
    where I was running
    the ducks at water’s edge suddenly running too
    and in the empty space of their wake
    a tattered cat.
    I called him on his hunting
    and he meowed, ran after me
    hungry, lonely, being eaten alive by the city
    but I ran to lose him
    not because I don’t love cats
    or didn’t want to rescue his painful life
    but because I was far from home in a conference hotel.
    Was it the same
    with the men I approached
    when I was young and lonely?
    I always took it personally
    but maybe they were just figures rendered useless
    in the scheme of things
    on the day my heart was warming
    and years later
    they paused to scratch out an excuse.
    —

    Jenny McBride’s writing has appeared in Common Ground Review, Rappahannock Review, The California Quarterly, Conclave, Tidal Echoes, Streetwise, and other publications. She makes her home in the rainforest of southeast Alaska.