The Zingara Project

Category: National Poetry Month

  • Poem a Day Challenge in April

    Poem a Day Challenge in April

    The Zingara Project /Zingara Poetry Review is celebrating the end of its hiatus with a poetry prompt every day in April for National Poetry Month.

    Writers are invited to write in response to as many or as few prompts as they like over the course of the month.

    Beginning June 1, Zingara Poetry Review will open for submissions for poems inspired by one of the poetry prompts offered in April.

    Submissions may be overtly related to a prompt, or have only a thread of connection. If you wrote a poem in response to a prompt and threw out all but one line during revision, that counts.

    So come back each day in April for a new poetry prompt, spend some time in May revising your best drafts, and send 1-2 poems our way beginning in June.

    Full submission guidelines and instructions will be posted on June 1.

  • WordPress Hosted Literary Journals accepting submissions

    WordPress Hosted Literary Journals accepting submissions

    This list is regularly monitored and updated, so come back often to see what’s been added.

    Burning House Press: Burning House Press is born from a community arts ethos and focus. We seek to cultivate spaces where people feel safe and encouraged to explore and express their creativity. We hold a belief in the power of creativity, and share a faith in the fundamental connectivity of all peoples, especially as expressed through the commonality and community of multi-disciplinary arts. We believe that capitalism and its attendant profit culture is a public health issue, affecting us all on the level of our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health and well-being.

    Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose: An annual national literary journal seeking works from writers during its fall reading period each year. We publish fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction of both contest winners and other writers in May of each year. The literary journal is produced by the faculty in the Department of English at Fairfield University, and Fairfield undergraduate students gain hands-on experience in helping to edit and produce the journal by taking EN 340: The World of Publishing or The World of Publishing II.

    Eyes+ Words: Words have immense power and, when used responsibly, can help shape the world in hopes to make a better tomorrow. Let’s come together and share a story or two. Please feel free to share your original poetry/stories and we will gladly post them on our website, full credit will be given. Email us: EyesPlusWords@gmail.com

    Gulf Stream Literary Magazine: Publishing emerging and established writers of exceptional fiction, nonfiction and poetry since 1989. We also publish interviews and book reviews. Past contributors include Sherman Alexie, Steve Almond, Jan Beatty, Lee Martin, Robert Wrigley, Dennis Lehane, Liz Robbins, Stuart Dybek, David Kirby, Ann Hood, Ha Jin, B.H. Fairchild, Naomi Shihab Nye, F. Daniel Rzicznek, and Connie May Fowler. Gulf Stream Magazine is supported by the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

    Little Patuxent Review: Little Patuxent Review is a community-based publication focused on writers and artists from the Mid-Atlantic region, but all excellent work originating in the United States will be considered.Although our issues are organized around themes, we allow considerable leeway in how contributors interpret them in order to ensure access to the broadest range of high-quality work.

    The Mantle: Founded in 2017, The Mantle Poetry is an online quarterly journal dedicated to contemporary poetry. We’ll publish the most memorable poems we receive. When the time comes, we’ll nominate for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

    Naugatuk River Review: What NRR is looking for are poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story. They can be stories of a moment or an experience, and can be personal, fictional or historical. A good narrative poem that would work for our journal has a compressed narrative, and we prefer poems that take up two pages or less of the journal (50 lines max). We are looking above all for poems that are well-crafted, have an excellent lyric quality and contain a strong emotional core. Any style of poem is considered, including prose poems. Poems with very long lines don’t fit well in the format. Hope this helps

    Panoply, A Literary Zine: Join us for a wide-ranging and impressive array of writing

    Peacock Journal: strives to publish beautiful creative works. Please read the guidelines below carefully before you submit work (and please note our “Alice’s Restaurant” Rule).

    Prosetrics, pronounced as “Pro-zet-ricks,” is an independent publication based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was created with aspiring poets, writers, artists, and photographers in mind. This effort is for the talented people out there who are looking for a place to display their work, and we aim to publish new talent. “Prosetrics” is a combination of prose and poetry in its matrix. In other words, Prosetrics is a prose, art, and photography matrix created by extremely outstanding poets, authors, artists, and photographers around the world.

    QuillsEdge Press: A small (yet mighty) non-profit press dedicated to publishing the poetry of womxn and non-binary femmes who are at least 40 years old. Please browse our available books and support the indispensable poetry we’re proud to be publishing. We are committed to equity in publishing, and honor the voices of womxn who are members of historically underrepresented groups.

    Third Wednesday began as a monthly writers’ workshop for poets meeting at an Ann Arbor bookstore every third Wednesday. While another literary anthology might seem unnecessary, we believe it’s vital to publish contemporary creative work. Third Wednesday offers writers and artists another opportunity to see their work in print. Our initial focus was publishing compelling poetry, but we’ve expanded to include short fiction and artwork to reach more contributors and satisfy readers’ creative appetites.

    Vox Populi A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature reaching over 20,000 subscribers each day and featuring over 8,000 archived posts.

  • Things to Be Grateful for During the American Winter by Michael Brockley

    ~For K.D.

    The portrait of Harriet Tubman burbling in the ink of a twenty-dollar bill. The way hands can be cupped to form eagles and bison when the shadows on bedroom walls slip through the jet stream of your imagination. The way women’s boots never go out of style. The way wallets are cluttered with unclaimed lottery tickets and Chinese fortune scripts. Take pleasure knowing chaos theory honors the wisdom of Japanese butterflies. Cherish this year of lunar wonders. October’s Hunter’s Moon. The November moon so close a heroine could step off of her hometown street into zero gravity. Hold your memory of a president racing his puppy through the White House halls at Christmas. Celebrate the happy accident of the newest blue and the oldest cherished songs. Sing Hallelujah! Thank the fog. Thank the way persimmons ripen during hard frosts. The taste of haiku lingering on your tongue. Take comfort in the assurance that scarves will always fit. Be grateful for the circle of light dancing above your head. It guardians the secrets in your eyes. Be grateful for the photographs of your most embarrassing moments. Be grateful for the impossible challenges before you. Be grateful knowing that, for this hour, gratitude is enough.

    —

    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. 

     

  • 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.

  • Internal Exile by Diane G. Martin

              “…we have no hope and yet
              we live in longing.”

                         Inferno, Dante

    I’ve been pressed between the pages
    of a heavy book, a keepsake
    to be rediscovered one fine
    day, yellow, brittle, print-stained—
    a sentimental talisman.

    I’m so close to every line;
    indeed, they are on me engraved.
    Exquisite shapes keep me awake,
    though once lofty, once plain thoughts have
    blurred, have rubbed their meanings away.

    The lack of air is thick with them—
    clouds of locusts on a rampage—
    these words elbowing each other
    These worlds of words, all alien.
    I distrust them–black, banal worn.

    Yet it’s not for nothing I’m named
    Diana.  For now, I bide my
    hours quietly, lie warily
    between famed leaves and string my bow.
    Somehow, I’ll fly to the dark wood.

    —

    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.

     

     

  • Notes in the Night by Judith Bader Jones

    A summer breeze, sheer
    as bedroom curtains, floats
    through a screened window
    and joins us in our double bed.

    Evening slows the rhythm
    of your beating heart when I rest
    against your chest and nighttime music
    becomes a cover for body pain and sorrow.

    Livin’ in this murky world – the blues
    dilutes our hurts while brush-stroke lyrics,
    sung by survivors, saves souls as we fall
    asleep holding onto each other.

    —

    Judith Bader Jones, a poet in Fairway, Kansas, has recent publications in  CHEST- The American College of Chest Physicians, Nostalgia and i-70 Review. She is an avid organic gardener and bird photographer.

     

  • Sleeping in Bed Together by John Grey

    You’re from a world where seasons never varied their routine
    and construction workers waved from beams on high
    and a revelation could be as simple
    as a bucking trout pulled from a stream.

    And now you’re with a woman, in a bed
    her body barely a shiver away from yours,
    suddenly aware of how little touch is needed to identify the other
    while always imagining the worst that lies in store for you.

    You got from hatching to imago
    with the usual helpings of slime and ooze,
    to where you’re heel to heel with the desired one,
    and yet still can be startled by such close companionship.

    You’re from a place where so little flesh went into the making of you.
    And here being fully grown is not something you find comforting,
    Yet from lack of light, a strange cadence emerges.
    low-breathing, low-flying beings navigating their way through sleep.

    —

    John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.  

     

     

     

     

  • Geode by Beth Politsch

    The news of your cancer
    began a fracture – a small crack
    we thought could be patched.

    But then it crept outward into the multicolored expanse of time
    and spread gray
    outward from its edges
    like the matte surface of a stone.

    I’ve tried drinking
    to stop my mind
    from trudging
    along that deepening fissure
    that spans from month one of your illness
    to month twenty when you died.

    But I never manage to dull the sharp edges
    of your truths:

    You were too young and too kind
    and so imperfect
    and complicated
    on your surface
    that you were everyone’s favorite
    sister and friend.

    The pain is unstoppable now,
    and in this strange middle phase
    of my life, I have accepted it
    as necessary.

    Now I am walking with purpose
    to break the gray veil
    of your sickness.
    I conjure spikes
    from my heels
    and push them down into the darkness.

    I fall to my knees
    and my hands become pick-axes.
    I claw into the fear until it smashes open,
    exposing its crystal center.

    And this is where I find you:

    In this precious cache
    of mineralized memories
    you sparkle with facets
    both jagged and smooth,
    your light and color

    reflecting
    into all dimensions.

    —

    Beth Politsch is a storyteller, poet and copywriter based in Lawrence, Kansas. She currently creates content for Hyland Software and writes children’s books and poetry in her free time.

     

  • Nook by Hannah Rousselot

    The closet is small enough
    that when I go in with my book
    my body is compressed on all sides.

    I lean the pillow I brought
    against the thin wood.
    The flashlight makes the shadows
    stronger, but now I can read about

    a girl who escapes and saves the world.

    I have nothing to escape from
    except the toxic cloud
    that my parents created downstairs.

    I have nothing to save except
    my own bloody fingernails, from myself.

    —

    Hannah Rousselot is a queer DC based poet. She has been writing poetry since she could hold a pencil and has always used poems as a way to get in touch with her emotions. She writes poetry about the wounds that are still open, but healing, since her childhood and the death of her first love. Her work has appeared in Voices and Visions magazine, PanoplyZine, and Parentheses Magazine. In addition to writing poetry, Hannah Rousselot is also an elementary school teacher. She teaches a poetry unit every January, and nothing brings her more joy than seeing the amazing poems that children can create.

  • Mermaid Suicide by Danielle Wong

    My skin ripens—
    a nutty hazel canopy of flesh.
    Cocoa dust and tawny
    muscle roasting, hot
    fire beneath the relentless

    Sun. My private vessel,
    suffused with color and
    plagued by a vain
    saturation, but draped
    in Vogue and saintly couture.

    The corrosion has
    already begun—
    hot blood coursing
    through precious skin and
    brackish waves claiming me
    as their own.

    To drown like this,
    I think, would be quite
    convenient.
    To wither away,
    via sun and
    decay. Ugly moths and

    fireflies are the only
    inhabitants of the corroded
    corpse where I once dwelled.

    Has there ever been
    such a simple decline—
    an ending more languid than this?

    —

    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.

  • Pachyderm by Toti O’Brien

    What makes baby irresistible
    is candid decrepitude
    held so gracefully.

    Wrinkled and sagged
    a zillion-year-old skin
    stacked on its tiny skeleton

    yet clear of all attitude
    only wisdom
    that of pretending none.

    Little beast, born a centenarian
    but without a lament
    totters by with unsteady majesty.

    Such conspicuous fragility
    grizzled innocence
    in its meek stare.

    Eyes black corals
    buried by timeless oceans
    submerged by rippling sand.

    —

    Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She was born in Rome then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her work has most recently appeared in DIN Magazine, Panoplyzine, Courtship of Wind, and Colorado Boulevard.

     

     

  • White Crow by Yuan Changming

    Perching long in each human heart
    Is a white crow that no one has
    Ever seen, but everyone longs
    To be

    Always ready
    To fly out, hoping to bring back
    A glistening seed or a colorful feather
    As if determined to festoon its nest

    —

    Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart nominations, seven chapbooks, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), Best New PoemsOn Line, Threepenny Review and 1,389 others across 41 countries.

     

  • Safe by Karlo Sevilla

    “Along the sidewalk,
    always safest along the sidewalk,”
    father used to say.
    (A truck may swerve,
    roll over the sidewalk
    and pin you against
    a lamppost…)
    Still, always safest
    along the sidewalk.

    I wear my brand new pair
    of Air Jordan while I walk
    on the sidewalk.
    (They’re affordable
    and look and feel great
    as the real deal.)

    I’m safe as I stroll
    with my shoes
    on the sidewalk.

    —

    Karlo Sevilla is the author of “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Radius, Matter, Yellow Chair Review, Eunoia, Poetry24, The Ramingo’s Porch, Ariel Chart, In Between Hangovers, in the anthologies of Peacock Journal, Eternal Remedy, Riverfeet Press, and Azoth Khem Publishing, and elsewhere.

     

  • Night by Jerry Wemple

    Night falls suddenly when the sun declines
    behind these granite hills. The boy sits on
    the river side of the flood wall, his back
    to the town. He smokes a cigarette, counts
    the cars and tractor trucks on the state road
    across the water. Wonders where they’re bound.
    The boy would like a car, some way, any way
    to leave the town, to drive past the farms
    until the hills grow and the woods thicken
    and sit beside the tiny stream that is the start
    of this half-mile wide river. The boy rises,
    heads into town. He walks past the little park,
    a few blocks up Market, enters a tiny hot
    dog restaurant, nods to Old Sam, who started
    the place after the war. Sam knows, fixes
    one with everything, uncaps a blue birch
    from the old dinged metal floor cooler,
    while the boy fingers the lone coin in
    his pocket. Outside the wind rises and shifts.

    —

    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.

  • Overheard by Carolyn Martin

    As evening sneaks around
    the house,
    the ironing board and
    kitchen sink gossip about
    your first kiss.
    Inexplicable –
    how they understand
    the weight of soft,
    the intimacy
    of wind-brushed clouds; how,
    in this chartreuse spring,
    you’ll leave behind
    your baseball glove for moony moods
    and un-chewed fingernails; how
    you’ll charge
    summer’s quickenings
    with shattered
    beliefs of black and white.
    Tonight, as the board folds itself
    and the last dish is washed,
    the owl clock hushes
    their surmise.
    If you had overheard, you
    would have entertained
    their slivered truths,
    perhaps cheered their prophecy.

    —

    From English teacher to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and perfect summers. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK including “Stirring,” “CALYX,” “Persimmon Tree,” “How Higher Education Feels,” and “Antiphon.” Her third collection, Thin Places, was released by Kelsay Books in Summer 2017. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penciled “extremely maudlin,” Carolyn is ​still ​amazed she has continued to write.