The Zingara Project

Category: Writing, Revising, Blogging

  • Rites of Spring by Donna Vorreyer

    I discovered this week’s poignant poem honoring woman’s best friend in the first issue of the new online literary magazine, Mixed Fruit, published June 1, 2011. It is a bi-monthly periodical and the second issue, published August 2st, is now available. Enjoy!

    Rites of Spring
    by Donna Vorreyer

    Gardening, I come to the place
    where we buried our first dog, the dirt
    now sprouted with daylillies and sprigs
    of weedy thistle. My husband dug the hole
    in early fall when her hips began to fail,
    before the ground became unbreakable.
    She lasted until March, the plot
    covered in plywood and late snow.

    I pull the thistle’s gangly roots, hoping
    for orange blossoms instead of burrs,
    I try not to think of her bones beneath,
    the beetles that pick her carcass clean
    of the sleek, black fur that once velveted
    my hand. Ghost ants haunt the undersides
    of upturned rocks and branches, scribble
    their white calligraphy of industry.

    Our golden retriever limps up, nudges
    her grey muzzle at my elbow, collapses
    her own crooked hips beside me. She does
    not rise until I do, her front legs bearing
    the slow bones of her backside. I stoop to bury
    my face in her neck as if love could keep her
    from this dirt. As if love could fail as easily
    as flesh, as flower. As if it were that frail.

    Donna Vorreyer spends her days convincing middle-schoolers that words matter. Her work as appeared in many journals including Weave, Cider Press Review, qarrtsiluni, and Rhino. She is a contributor to the blog Voice Alpha, and you can also find her online at her own blog, Put Words Together. Make Meaning

  • Now Exiting NaNo Land

    I am proud to report that I have met the challenge of writing 50,063 words in 30 days and have likewise received a rewarding video clip of all the Office of Letters and Light’s interns and staff congratulating and applauding my efforts. The last couple of days were a little touch- and-go, though, because I was driving back from Albuquerque, New Mexico and hadn’t managed to write a single word while on the road.  This translated as a 5,000 word deficit this morning, but luckily I am a pretty fast typist (even faster when I don’t have to worry about spelling and punctuation) and can amass about 820 words in a fifteen minute word sprint. I finished before 4:00 PM today – after stopping for a long lunch with my aunt and doing a little grocery shopping – some eight hours before the deadline. I’m pretty exhausted now, but have some poems to write if I am going to meet the November Poem a Day challenge. I just  wanted to brag a little and show off my winner’s badge with a timely blog.

    A special thanks for all of your unwavering support during this year’s NaNoWriMo insanity.

  • Why “Zingara Poet?”

    While considering a representative name for my new blog, I researched synonyms for “traveler” and found “zingara.”  Great word! I thought, and submitted it as my blog name. Unfortunately,  “zingara” was already taken.  I was pretty attached to the word by that point and wanted to utilize it somehow. Adding a number would have been easy, but I don’t really like user-names that include numbers and generally think they are tragically un-creative. So, I tacked “poet” onto the end, and while tacking on the word “poet” isn’t  terribly more creative than just adding a number, it’s still NOT a number. Plus, I like to think of myself as a “female traveling poet.” It suits my romantic personality and sort of reflects my tendency to take myself too seriously, despite criticism from folks who are less romantic and self-serious.  I’d like to add here that while these characteristics sometimes create obstacles to my writing success, I’m pretty much over tying to change my romantic, self-serious characteristics and am resigned to living in harmony with them.

    Hope you enjoy my meandering musings in the years to come.