The Zingara Project

Author: Lisa Hase-Jackson

  • Interview with Redmond, Washington Poet Laureate Jeannine Hall Gailey

    JHG200x300 (2)I Forgot to Tell You the Most Important Part…

    Without this knowledge, you’ll never make it:
    it’s one part fashion advice and two parts survivalist.
    Learn to talk to people so they think you’re honest
    but never be honest. Cooking eggs may save your life,
    so crack them, neat and firm, pour into the skillet,
    stir gently. Forget about your shoes; people will judge
    you by your shine, the imminent light you offer them.
    Be a lamppost in wilderness, be the elephant
    in the showroom.  If you steal the idol, make sure
    to carry a weighted bag of sand. No surprises: we’ve lied
    about having it all. It’s either the piano or the pit viper.
    Cinderella’s shoe came off at midnight because it hurt,
    and Red Riding Hood’s real story involves cannibalism and a striptease.
    Don’t wear red lipstick, don’t you kiss your mother with that mouth?
    Long bangs hide a multitude of sins. Ask your grandmother
    about the herbs she used to swallow while pregnant.
    The butterflies here didn’t start out black, they were white
    as onion skin – and the forest was more ominous
    before the smokestacks. Well, here’s your little basket
    and red coat, sweetheart, sweetmeat, smile like you mean it,
    shake what you’ve got while you’ve got it,
    go out into the world and knock them dead.

    —

    Tell me about the moment you learned you were chosen as Poet Laureate for Redmond, Washington.

    Well, the process was somewhat complicated. I was nominated, then I had submit materials, then I had two sets of interviews, then I was told I was chosen for the position. I was only the city’s second Poet Laureate, so I think a lot of the process was new for the city. I got to meet with the Mayor as well. That was a pretty exciting day!

    What were/are some of your outreach projects as Poet Laureate?

    I’ve had a couple, under the umbrella slogan “Geeks for Poetry, Poetry for Geeks!” Since our community is mostly made up of technical workers (among other companies, Microsoft and Nintendo are here) I was working hard to reach out to a techie crowd with multimedia (an art show with comic-book-style illustrations to go along with my inaugural reading’s poems based on comic books and anime, for instance) and bringing in poets and editors from around the community to talk about subjects like e-publishing, social media, and scientific poetry. I’m also working with the local library, choosing a book of poetry a quarter for the “Redmond Reads Poetry” project.

    Discuss your view of the role of education in the creative process? Is an MFA an important credential for artists and writers to attain?

    Education of some kind is essential for the creative process. That is, I don’t believe you can become a great writer without a good deal of practice as well as a lot of reading. Reading voraciously – the things being published in contemporary magazines, books from thirty to fifty to two hundred years ago, books popular and unpopular, lauded and unlauded – can only help you improve your sense of voice, your sense of where you belong as a writer. I love fiction and literary criticism as well as poetry, and I think a broad knowledge of all genres is helpful when it comes to building your literary “toolkit.” Is that a phrase, literary toolkit? My very favorite instructional guide to poetry is “Introduction to Poetry” by X.J. Kennedy, and I’m particularly fond of the 1969 and 1989 versions, if you can find them used. For me, speculative fiction writers like Margaret Atwood, Kelly Link and Haruki Murakami have all helped me develop my voice as a poet, so you have to cast a large net, as “your” essential writers may be writers you haven’t discovered yet.

    You know, I got my MFA fairly late, in my early thirties, and I had been writing seriously for some years before I got it, which I think made it a more satisfying experience than my earlier degrees. I got an MA in English back in my twenties while I was working full-time for AT&T, and just wasn’t able to get the time to go back until much later, but I never lost my interest in poetry. I think if I had kept on with my poetry routine pre-MFA – that is, going to poetry conferences, regular workshops and writing groups and readings, trying to create my own reading list by visiting at Open Books (Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore with very knowledgeable owner/curators) – I would probably have been fine and eventually published my books anyway, but the MFA gave me a boost in terms of confidence and a focus that is only available when you devote yourself to something singularly for a couple of years.  Encouragement from my very kind mentors made me feel like the writing life wasn’t, in fact, impossible. But encouragement from my regular writing group of ten years (!!) has given me a community, which I think is just as important as an MFA to continuing writing through rejection, setbacks, discouragements, and regular life. We can’t think of the writing life as something that only happens in the academy – that’s not a realistic regimen for most people – but something that can occur along with family and job obligations as well, something we can nurture through reading, attending poetry events, cultivating friendships with other writers.

    The MFA used to be required for a teaching position, and there is some evidence that today, in a very competitive environment for non-adjunct positions, a PhD is even encouraged among creative writers, which didn’t used to be the case, so if you want to teach at the college level, I’d say yes, it’s probably necessary (either that or the PhD.) It wouldn’t hurt you to win some big book contests or book awards, either. Did I mention that it’s difficult to get a non-adjunct teaching position in creative writing these days?

    But I would encourage people who don’t have the time or money (or inclination) for an MFA to look at other resources, such as writer’s centers (such as The Richard Hugo House here in Seattle or The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis,) and the myriad writer’s conferences and writing retreats available through listings in places like Poets & Writers. I’d encourage them to go to readings in their area, volunteer with local literary magazines, and arrange meetings with other writers on a regular basis.  If I haven’t already mentioned it enough, reading a lot – poetry and fiction, both contemporary and the classics – will never ever hurt your writing.

    What has been the role of poetry in your development as a creative person?

    I’ve loved poetry a long time, ever since my mom gave me her college textbook when I was about ten years old and I fell in love with “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock!” I’m also very interested and inspired by the visual arts, and spend lots of time at galleries and museums, but my abilities with my hands (when I’ve taken art classes) are at odds with the limits of my imagination. I don’t feel the same limitations with the written word. I’m also not much of a public person, and feel much more comfortable with e-mail than phone calls and personal meetings – probably not too strange a characteristic for writers, as we tend to be introverts. I tend to think of “writing projects” in bigger terms – like, a series of poems rather than a single poem, and am often inspired by something – a piece of music, a film, an artifact like a painting or a comic book image – to write an entire book at a time. That, of course, can take years, but the inspiration or idea usually happens all at once.

    Who are you reading right now?

    I just finished a wonderful re-release, Stella Gibbons Nightingale Wood, a sort of re-telling of the Cinderella story with a Downton Abbey-esque British-class-structure satirical spin  – and now I’m looking (mosty in vain) for her out-of-print re-telling of the Snow Queen called The Snow-Woman. In terms of poetry, I end up reading mostly books I’m sent for review and I always feel I’m behind on my stack – I know I am, in fact – but I must give glowing recommendations to several new books: Annette Spaulding-Convy’s In Broken Latin, Kelly Davio’s Burn This House, and Jehanne Dubrow’s Red Army Red. I’m also really enjoying the tragi-comic poetry stylings of Gregory Sherl and Noel Sloboda’s mythic-with-a-twist Our Rarer Monsters. I’m also reading the new Philip Pullman edition of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the new Jack Zipes, The Irresistible Fairy Tale.

    Do you have a consistent writing practice?

    Besides my blog, which I’ve been keeping faithfully since 2005, I probably write about two poems a week and maybe a piece of essay or flash fiction or pseudo-memoir (I’ve been experimenting with genres outside poetry, mostly for fun, not for publication.) When I have freelance writing assignments, they usually take up all my writing energy until they’re turned in – which ends up being a good motivator for getting those assignments done ahead of schedule.

     

    —

    Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011). Her upcoming book, Unexplained Fevers, will be available from New Binary Press this spring. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She was a multiple Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Award winner (in 2011 and 2007) and is a 2013 Jack Straw Writer. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review. Her web site is www.webbish6.com.

  • Submission News

    I am nearly caught up with reading submissions. April and May submissions have been read and largely decided upon. If you submitted during those months and have not heard from me, I am either deliberating or trying to figure out how to format something on WordPress. I am still reading June, July and August submissions.

    October’s theme is Ekphrastic poetry.

    Thanks everyone for your patience, and happy writing!

     

    Lisa

  • On Sunday by Karen Loeb

    Tomorrow I will make potato latkes.
    I will be a renegade and use sweet potatoes,
    not the white potatoes I grew up with,
    the white potatoes that were always
    used in the pancakes. The white potatoes
    that my mother never questioned,
    that she placed on the table in many
    different disguises—mashed, baked,
    boiled and cold in salad with mayo stuck
    on everything, obscuring what lay beneath
    the slick white coat.

    I will use sweet potatoes when I make
    my latkes. I will use minced scallions
    instead of yellow onions cut in chunks.
    I will even use the green leaves that
    arc out from the white bulb like a dancer
    extending a leg. I will cut off the roots.

    Of course I will do that.

    I will grate the potatoes in a processor,
    something my mother never had. I will
    not feel guilt for doing this. My latkes
    will not be less authentic because the potatoes
    were whirled around and chopped into many
    small bits. I will invite friends over
    to eat the small round cakes with a
    tinge of orange. They cannot be mistaken
    for white potato latkes. I’ve made sure of that.

    —

    Karen Loeb writes and teaches in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  Recent publications have been a story in Thema, poems in The Main Street Rag, Bloodroot and Hanging Loose.

  • There is Darkness to the Water by Martin Willitts Jr.

    There is darkness to water
    of intent and revenge for what we’ve done,
    as the earth becomes hotter and hotter.

    What will we tell our sons and daughters?
    In our destruction, what have we won?
    There is darkness to the water.

    It thirsts for revenge and in its anger
    it flattens cities, ending what we begun,
    causing the earth to become hotter and hotter.

    Who was the leaders? Why did they falter?
    Our forests, ruined land, both made barren.
    There is darkness in the water.

    What will we tell children after?
    We ruined the earth and all we were given,
    and made the air sulfur, becoming hotter.

    Now we cannot go back. The winds stir
    nothing and we cannot alter
    the intense darkness in the water
    which floods as things get hotter.
    —
    Martin Willitts Jr forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting for the Day to Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press), “Swimming in the Ladle of Stars” (Kattywompus Press), “A Is For Aorta” (Kind of Hurricane Press, e-book), “Martin Willitts Jr, Greatest Hits” (Kattywompus Press), “The Way Things Used To Be” (Writing Knights Press), “Irises, the Lightning Conductor For Van Gogh’s Illness” (Aldrich Press).

  • Swedish Flooring by Jeannie E. Roberts

    The old linoleum spoke,
    kept track, took note,
    of scuffs and cracks,
    marked anecdote, recalled
    a lifetime worn by others;
    where, thoughts of feet
    made floorboards creak,
    caused stabs near grab
    of knob and turn meant
    throbs when dotard trod
    with memory-mud and
    gore; still, shine imbued
    in servitude, light infused
    this floor, where pets were
    friends, pledged care―no end,
    and softness sat times four, sat
    just beyond the door.
    —
    Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of two books, including the newly released Nature of it All, a collection of poems (Finishing Line Press). For more, visit http://www.jrcreative.biz.

  • NeverNever Holes by Karen Bovenmyer

    NeverNever Holes

    We have been together for fifteen years and
    Never, never
    Have you left a hole in my wall

    There’ve been holes in other things
    to-do lists, clothes, missed birthdays,
    valentines days, anniversaries, sometimes
    But never, never
    A fist-sized hole in my bedroom wall

    Your voice saying
    What do you want? I don’t know what you want, I can’t be what you want
    Tearing your hair, scratching your arms, punching a
    heart-shaped hole in my wall

    And I stand there, sobbing
    Like the eight-year-old I suddenly am again watching my sister
    throw dishes at my mother
    I said, I will never, never be like her

    And under the thick sounds I am making
    Like fifteen holes knocked into fifteen walls
    I am saying, I will never, never leave you

    And you are saying, I will never change
    But
    There is a hole in my wall now
    An opening that wasn’t there before

    And finally I am hearing
    Please, please love me for who I am

    And so, I say again
    Fifteen times

    I do, I do, I do
    I do, I do, I do
    I do,  , I do
    I do, I do, I do
    I do, I do, I do
    —
    Karen Bovenmyer holds an MFA in Creative Writing: Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine. She teaches and mentors students at Iowa State University.

  • The Sounds of a Breakdown by Dr. P

    The sounds of
    A Breakdown is
    Messy and loud –

    An en media res
    Heathen sound –

    A crashing down —

    Like pagan workers
    Who carelessly

    Throw away cast
    Away bricks – from
    Long ignored
    Pyramids – just
    To load machine
    Made construction
    Beams –

    Walk beneath
    The metal
    Street slowly,
    And surely you
    Will hear the Snap –
    The breaking,
    Falling Wreck —

    Such a sound:
    Total – Forlorn –.
    —
    Dr. P. holds a Ph.D. in English from SUNY Stony Brook University. She is Grenada born, Brooklyn-based Poet and Essayist.

  • Tides by Diane Kendig

    ~”We lower our sails, awhile we rest.” — Longfellow

    My nine-year-old niece’s mother called us from the Midwest. Lauren, distraught,
    asked, “Why couldn’t they just run, leave home?” as she’s been taught
    to do for fire. They’ve looked at maps. What else ought

    she explain to her child about Nicaragua, wracked and wrecked again, the Erinyes
    of Mitch. One day later, driving along the coast, we saw the perigee of perigees
    made the moon the most huge and gorgeous mound, a “geez”

    experience, as we say in Ohio. And too, it shone so full that night, a near coincidence
    wrote Joe Rao, an astronomer, explaining in the Times that the high incidence
    of sand at low tide was autumn “spring tide,” this widest expanse of dense

    beach yet. We love low tide for walking, and that huge space it cleared, like a spark
    gap, stretched us as we zigzagged with our Nicaraguan friend in a state park
    and spoke of the home she hates to be away from. Under a pine arc,

    so greenly dark, so pained and useless as we felt, we heard more from her of Nicaragua’s
    mudslides. We’ve lived through its usual rainy season: no umbrellas, paraguas,
    can stop it, only wait for the breezes of November after the rains, las aguas,

    end. But this was so much more and worse even than the last, when the most banefully
    wicked winds and water lashed the land, killing thousands. We didn’t fully
    fathom the difference yet, standing in that moon-dazzling lovely lee.

    —
    Diane Kendig curates a website for the Cuyahoga County Public Library (greater Cleveland, OH) for National Poetry Month which features a prompt, a poem, a link, and a book recommendation each day in the month of April. The “Nesting Poem” will be the prompt for Monday, April 14th: http://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/What-to-Read/Read-Write-30-Days-of-Poetry.aspx

  • Goddessing Above the Waist by A.J. Huffman

    The shirt was not hair. I was.
    Chewed. And left
    for death
    in the middle of a road.
    Crossed. Gnarled.
    And gnatted.
    Until the wind broke
    through. And against me.
    My wishes:
    wished and washed.
    Discarded by the locks.
    Plait one.
    Pearl two.
    They hate me
    because I am beautiful
    ly vacant.
    *Sigh*
    Hold me
    to your ear.
    And listen for the coming
    of the crows. 

    

    —
    
A.J. Huffman has published five solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her sixth solo chapbook will be published in October by Writing Knights Press.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest.  Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  http://www.kindofahurricanepress.com
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Shadows by Anne Whitehouse
    
			
    The stone garden lingers like a shadow
    
reflected in the depths of her eyes.
    

    The shadows of water spiders
    
lie on the sandy stream bed
    
like black petals.
    

    Here, in the heart of the forest,
    
cleft by a waterfall,
    
the sun’s heat never penetrates.
    

    —
    

    Bio- Anne Whitehouse was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and graduated from Harvard College and Columbia University. She is the author of the poetry collections—The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, Bear in Mind and One Sunday Morning. Anne Whitehouse’s most recent poetry collection is The Refrain (Dos Madres Press, 2012). Her novel, Fall Love, is available in ebook format from Feedbooks, Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, and iTunes.
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Made Worse by Jeff Burt
    
			
    Hurt is the manner in which the homeless
    
pronounce heart, and in doing so
    

    identify the state of it, their cold
    
puckered mouths unable to slow
    

    the gutteral vowel. And we, more proud
    
of our rags than the rich their silk,
    

    we had wanted to feed the famished, turn
    
tanks and subs into cups of milk.
    

    But words cannot multiply fish and loaf,
    
so you chose the worming up
    

    the corporate tree and I chose grubbing
    
out cash for the most appealing group.
    

    Today I handed out cups of coffee
    
to those who utter hurt for heart
    

    and mean the same, and listened to their cold
    
hard prose, not a warm word in it.
    

    We have not written for these many years
    
and I am one made worse for it.
    

    —
    

    Jeff Burt works in manufacturing. He has work in Dandelion Farm Review, Nature Writing, and forthcoming in Windfall and Thrice Fiction.
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Secret River (for the poets) by Jules Nyquist
    
			
    The Mississippi shows herself
    

    by waiting under the bridge.
    
She saves those wanting to walk on water
    
drowns others.
    

    Her veil falls over the dam,
    
built from the sand
    
she eroded first.
    

    I am married to my work
    
to bear my children one spoonful at a time.
    

    Her humming knows,
    
and I sleep
    

    with the fish and the rocks
    
and the damned.
    
—
    

    From Behind the Volcanoes, released March 22, 2014: http://www.julesnyquist.com/events.html
    

    Jules Nyquist lives in Albuquerque and is the creator of the Poetry Playhouse.  She received her MFA from Bennington College, VT and her poetry collection, “Appetites,” (Beatlick Press) was a finalist for the New Mexico/Arizona 2012 Book Awards.  Her next book of poems is entitled “Behind the Volcanoes.”  www.julesnyquist.com
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Song of Sorrow by Jeremy Garnett
    
			
    Harken, to the breeze which blows, and the words which flow, like a curlew’s cry on the evening wind.
    
   Haunting, ever haunting,
    
till in the fading light, gone to memory.
    

    Listen, beneath the moon-time glow, for the dance of silent wanderers, beyond the edge of hearing,
    
   haunting, ever haunting.
    
Crying out in absent loss, gone to memory.
    

    Glance, from below shuttered eyes, as wisps of sorrow vanish between decaying buildings, forgotten trees.
    
   Haunting, ever haunting.
    
A remembrance of reality, gone to memory.
    

    Sidle out of space or time, step from reality’s dream to the edge of darkness, balance on the edge that is
    
   haunting, ever haunting
    
the stream of life that never was, gone to memory
    

    Hear the curlew’s cry and pirouette on the edge of silence, till truth’s song cascades across the frontier,
    
   to haunt, forever haunt,
    
on the periphery of existence, atop the wall of sanity, in memory’s future and history’s impending past.
    

    Wait,
    
   For the curlew’s haunting cry
    
and weep, for all that wasn’t and all that will never be,
    
gone to memory.
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
  • 
		
		
    
			
			
    Like Her by by J.D. Isip
    
			
    Thirty-eight, maybe forty boxes—
    
how does that divide by nine marriages?
    
Old photo albums we don’t look through
    
stacked sideways, shut for years—
    
A hat box her third husband gave her
    
from Italy—where she said he died
    
At least to her—stuffed with Christmas cards
    
the old 70’s, foil kind—flimsy
    
And showy, now frail, like her
    

    I’ve begged her to dump them, dump them all
    
but she protests, she pulls some trick—
    
A yellowed picture of my dad in a fading, brown suit
    
or my brother’s first card from his father (not mine)—
    
I digress. To me, it’s a waste
    
like being married nine times
    

    To hold onto the crumbling pieces of a past
    
that rots away in a rented storage space
    
Each box as empty as they are full
    

    Married nine times—unfathomable
    
as these old boxes, stuffed, overflowing
    
Contents far too daunting, too consuming to explore—
    
probably not enough to learn from, or care for
    
To me, it’s a waste—I’m not like her—
    
I’d throw them away
    
Clean up and move on.
    
—
    

    J.D. Isip’s academic writings, poetry, plays, and short stories have appeared (or will appear) in a number of publications including The Louisville Review, Changing English, Revista Aetenea, St. John’s Humanities Review, Teaching American Literature, The Citron Review, Poetry Quarterly, Scholars & Rogues, Mused, and The Copperfield Review. He is a doctoral student in English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
  • 
		
		
    
			
			
    Do the Dead See? by John Brugaletta
    
			
    I was new at the job, so the corpses were new to me.
    
As I snored in my room, a mortician came in, woke me.
    
It was a homeless man, our mortuary’s month for them,
    
and he needed me to assist. When I got to the
    
room with the porcelain table, he said, “I’ve got to go
    
over to the other side for more embalming fluid.”
    

    So I waited, looking at the street dweller’s face,
    
stone white and rigid. How many soup kitchens
    
had poured their chicken plasma down that throat?
    
What career of his had crashed, what wife died
    
or left him as he sank? What did his voice sound like,
    
his walk look like? What would he say about himself?
    

    Then his eyes opened.
    
I waited for him to speak, make a move, anything.
    
Nothing. Just the eyes staring at the ceiling.
    
The mortician came back. I said, “Don’t embalm him.
    
He’s alive. Look, his eyes opened.” He said, “Aah,
    
they all do that,” and he slipped holders under the lids.
    

    —
    

    John Brugaletta likes to make tables out of unusual woods like jatoba and purpleheart. He also likes to write poems, sometimes about himself, sometimes not. He left the Marine Corps in 1960.