The Zingara Project

Category: Zingara Poetry Review: Poetry Picks

  • Guardian by Penelope Scambly Schott

    A veiled woman stands tall
    among stars. Every night
    she rotates the shining sky.
    Some of her stars are old,
    others are not yet visible.
    She’s been busy tending to stars
    since before the beginning of counting.

    On earth she has four children
    and each child is beloved:
    water for spilling through channels,
    air for hugging shapes,
    loose dirt for its grit,
    and fire for lighting the sky.
    Her name is Do not despair.

    In her netted veil she watches
    as a mama skunk drinks
    from a stream that ripples over rocks,
    the kits safe in their burrow
    under the luster of stars.
    The skunk’s white stripe
    might be the Milky Way.

    Penelope Scambly Schott’s most recent book is HOW I BECAME AN HISTORIAN.  She lives in Portland and Dufur, Oregon where she teaches an annual poetry workshop.

  • Jetman by Jonathan Travelstead

    I rebuffer the YouTube video of Swiss ex-fighter pilot Yves Rossi
    & watch this man-cum-black wing let go the rails & bail out of the helicopter
    like a Navy SEAL, whirligig in a tailspun freefall until his aelerons
    & helmet’s rudder lock in, tilting into clean air.

    I think of birds’ aerobatics. How the swift hatchling- plummeting
    from the nest for the first time, remembers flight just in time. I see his manouevers
    named in the comments. Falling leaf. Chandelle. Afterburners quilled
    with kerosene for feathers, I watch him jockey in high definition

    a wide, blue field & wish it were me barrel rolling the Alps with a ballerina’s
    easy pirouette over shards of coal-dusted ice. I can’t see it enough,
    the dream every generations’ boy dreams- whether Iron Man, or an eagle,
    all of us wishing to attempt the split s. On replay I consider

    his skull’s declension from the slab of black wing,
    & the moment’s precipice where he submits to some higher plane of physics
    that to the rest of us is only dark art. Shoulders camber forward then
    he dives, puncturing cirrus, then cumulous cloud, contrails twisting

    at a moment past the last believable one when he cranes his head & body
    in a half pitch skyward once more, a cough of flame as he cuts power,
    pulls the ripcord on a ballooned parachute which lowers him
    to the ground in a landing he- incredibly, survives.

    Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro, and also as co-editor for Cobalt Review. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review, on Poetrydaily.com, and has work forthcoming in The Crab Orchard Review, among others. His first collection “How We Bury Our Dead” by Cobalt Press was released in March, 2015, and his “Conflict Tours” is forthcoming in Spring of 2017.

  • In Memoriam by Sharon Scholl

    I feel the sigh of thinking
    about you, breath
    carving out a riverbed of memory.

    Cool in the shadow
    of my passing through,
    scenes flicker – you standing

    in a door three summers
    tall. I’m trying to find
    your form, assemble love
    from the labyrinth of places
    that contained us, the web
    of words that passed for truth.

    Your pulse is made of ashes.
    Your being is a whirlpool
    in the ripples of my brain.

    Sharon Scholl is professor emerita from Jacksonville University (Fl)  where she taught humanities and non-western studies.  Her chapbook, Summer’s Child, is new from Finishing Line Press.  Individual poems are current in Adanna, Caesura and, Rat’s Ass Review.

  • Paint On Pasteboard by Peter Goodwin

    I was about to chuck it, in a push to clear space
    but the image, painted on pasteboard, looked vaguely
    familiar, a winding river, wandering through lush woods,
    triggering a memory of a long ago summer,
    of picnics on a bluff, smiling women flirting,
    the slow gentle current taking us, like driftwood,
    floating along its curving meandering path, while
    he set up his easel to capture the Ukrainian light.

    So much seemed possible, bathed in summer days
    when Perestroika loosened the cold grip of communism,
    who could have imagined that the regime would collapse,
    Ukraine become independent and fritter its freedom,
    imperial Russia return and that pristine river valley,
    so close to Donetsk would become a battlefield,
    the river washing away blood and pleasure, beauty lost
    and almost forgotten, but for paint on pasteboard.

     

  • Releasing the Dark Landscape by Martin Willitts Jr

    The last sunlight falls behind the vanishing trees,
    where it hesitates before leaving completely.
    Some decisions are measured by regret.
    Some of us, when we find ourselves old, notice this.

    Out on the prairie, someone tries to hold the land
    together with barbed wire stapled to aging wood posts.
    however I am the kind of person who brings cutters
    and snip each sharp wire, and let the fields open.

    I am the kind who encourages yellow-throated meadowlarks.
    When cut, the dark will be released; the air will be set free.
    Doors on distanced houses ripple like muscles after working.
    Some wonder why I do this, question idleness as the cause,

    suggest I had nothing better to do. I am the kind laws
    are made to discourage people like me from acting impulsively.
    I cannot obey, and sharpen the blades like a raptor’s talons.
    I am the kind that knows outcrops sweeten with silence.

    I go to the wire to test it. It glints in moonlight and speaks.
    It knows the quiet patterns of flight, the tactical for listening.
    I should have brought the cutter, it slender purpose of justice,
    the rusting wind caught on it should be freed. I touch barehanded.

    It slices like eyes. It whispers, be careful. The fields, spare me.
    Yearning and ceasing are shadows lengthening, in stillness,
    in the final ambient light, then, the meadowlark stopped —
    only the robin’s sleepy-time sound is in this field, and it is held here.

    I experience the necessary absence. I also lose blood to its danger.
    They say actions speak for you and what you stand for.
    I have been listening to the suffering. Something had to be done.
    When I cut, the earth flies away, like wings or leaves or regret.
    ___

    Martin Willitts Jr. has 11 full-length collections including “How to Be Silent” (FutureCycle Press, 2016). His forthcoming include “Dylan Thomas and the Writing Shed” (FutureCycle Press); “Three Ages of Women” (Deerbrook Press); and the winner of the Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Turtle Island Press).

  • the erotic mind by Diana Raab

    the erotic mind is not one born from dirt
    but is one born from love—
    only if you allow it to be
    as you sit upon life’s teeter totterz-venus
    pregnant with the possibilities
    of all the joys which propel your happiness and peace
    erasing the sin from lust
    while embracing its beauty
    and how it makes the heart pump
    and come alive when it’s
    just landed upon its deathbed.

    Reach out and touch someone
    who will move you into the lust you deeply need,
    the lust you crave every day,
    Just allow lust to bring together your yin and the yang
    leading to your everlasting ecstasy.

    Diana Raab, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, memoirist, blogger, essayist and speaker.  Her book, “Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life” is forthcoming in 2017.  Raab is a regular blogger for Psychology Today, Huff50 (The Huffington Post), and PsychAlive. More at dianaraab.com.

  • a frog does not have a tail by Michael Coolen

    I watched an old man finishing his evening prayers
    when a boy squatted next to him and said
    I hope you are at peace, grandfather
    peace only the old man responded
    and you, boy, are you at peace
    no, grandfather, I have questions
    keeping peace away
    what questions asked the old man
    my little brother just died for no reason
    he just died grandfather
    why did Ebrima die so young
    why can’t my mother stop crying
    why does Allah let bad things happen to good people
    the old man sat quietly for a minute
    domanding, domanding, domanding boy
    he replied
    le ka nowulu
    little, little, little comes the understanding of Allah
    even for me some things make no sense
    you may as well ask a frog why it does not have a tail

    Michael Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor, performance artist, and writer. His works have been published widely, including the Oregon Poetry Association and Creative Non-fiction. He is also a published composer, with works performed around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, MoMA, and the Christie Gallery in New York.

  • Valediction by Robert Beveridge

    Valediction

    It just doesn’t seem to matter to you if I’m here or not

    Hiss of rain outside
    the blank tape that ends the mix
    unavoidably

    You just ignore me

    no more single drops
    steady stream down the windows
    grey light blurs to blue

    goodbye

    grey room,  air pregnant
    with moisture
    clouds on ceiling
    will this rain ever end?

    Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry just outside Cleveland, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Pink Litter, The Algebra of Owls, and Main Street Rag, among others.

  • Before Valentine’s Day by Kathamann

    My clumsy suggestion lilts off my tongue
    before any caution is exercised.  It closely
    appears to clutch at palpable implications
    thickening with its weak composition
    and becoming courage.  The twisted
    failure bends and shifts into my latest
    list of blown communiqués.

    I quell the urge to carry the heavy roar
    of human impulse, worthy though they
    may be, of robust vigor.  Guided to the
    opposite, I sense minor implications reflected
    with high gloss.

    Keeping the cosmic sparrows from predicting
    grim behind-the-scene news stories, a mere
    move may generate chaos.

    I am a returned Peace Corps Volunteer/Afghanistan and a retired registered nurse.  I have been active in the Santa Fe arts community for 30 years exhibiting in juried, group and solo exhibits.  (kathamann.com)  My poems have occasionally been published in local and regional anthologies.

  • School Bus by Michael Chin

    He was tired on the ride home. His head dipped once—twice—

    The fifth time, he slumped into me and caught himself. I looked straight ahead at the taped up alligator green seat back.

    On the eighth dip, his head descended onto my shoulder more gently. Maybe he knew what he was doing. No jolt. He rested.

    And I let him. I knew I shouldn’t. One boy sleeping on another was childish. Gay.

    But I didn’t push him off or think of pulling away so he’d flop down on the seat.

    I let him—I let him nestle in as I were his pillow. I let him snore. I thought I’d only stop him if he started to drool. That that was the limit.

    But in the meantime, for the first time, I eased into the role of protector. The last line of defense from anyone writing on his face. From a wet willy.

    I looked over his head, out the window and watched the way sign posts blurred into nothingness as the bus sped past them. As if the signs themselves were hovering and I could stick my hand right through the space beneath them. As if the laws of matter were subject neither to fact nor my will, but the whims of the space between what was and was not. In dream.

    Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and a recent alum of Oregon State’s MFA Program..He won the Bayou Magazine’s Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction and has published work in journals including The Normal School and Bellevue Literary Review. Follow him on Twitter @miketchin.

  • A Lesson in Romantics by Danielle Lowery

    A Lesson in Romantics
    -Mayday Parade

    I am a machine and a skitzo.
    A savage cave woman
    and a drone.
    I scratch at every movement
    Every wrong word
    Every memory,
    Like the beaten stray cat
    on the street corner.

    Never enough oil to grease my joints
    Never enough medication to silence the storm,
    I am stiff  and enraged.

    Swallowed by the quicksand
    enveloping me for so long,
    One fourth of my life
    devoted to your every need,
    One fourth of my life
    destroyed by your massive greed.

    You were a Dragon,
    a Siren,
    a Leech.
    For five years  I never knew,
    I never imagined  the traitor  was you.

    Danielle Lowery is a Senior at Chatham University. Her fiction has been published in The Minor Bird. Danielle has studied Creative Writing at both Sweet Briar College and Chatham University.

     

  • Early Morning Round by Jeff Burt

    The old women who rise early
    must think me the hound
    whose purest intention is to keep
    his habitual round
    as I plod the unlit county road
    in the rain, nose to the ground,

    led by a scent.  No meandering
    mutt am I, dog of hijink,
    junkyard, or bog.  Wet hair
    dripping my lips perpetual drink
    off the fountain of my nose
    I suppose they think I have a link

    lost in the chain of ideas, or missing
    boxcar on the train of thought.
    They don’t understand that out
    in the rain on the same old route
    I move at a pace which liberates
    limbs of faith from trunks of doubt.

    Rounding the bend and smelling the bread
    Mrs. Woods has baked I spy
    the waiting gait, and when I trod
    straight the road gone awry
    from spilling ditch near Emory’s pond
    I chase the ducks but they don’t fly.

    No longer a rushing cur am I.
    Intemperate geese nip at the back
    of my calves, and quacking ducks come
    pleading for the bread that I lack.

    Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California.  He has work in The Nervous Breakdown, Amarillo Bay, Across the Margins, and Atticus Review.  He was the summer issue poet of Clerestory in 2015.

     

  • Naïve and Sentimental Sonnet by Thomas Zimmerman

    This world so hard and dark but ours and shot
    clean through with light—and so I write to you,
    storm coming. I am drunk on life and clouds
    and God—or likely, love. That’s all we know
    on earth. So bring the dogs, a hat, a coat,
    your suffering—and come with me to . . . I
    don’t know, a place we make, a space, a world,
    an opening in matter, stuff. I’m not
    a physicist. A lover of the possible:
    that’s me. So loving that I break myself
    for openings. Odd God, but maybe He/
    She/It is in us all. Relax. Some things
    stay green. And if not this, Next world, I say,
    next world. Our changes haven’t finished yet.

    Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His chapbook In Stereo: Thirteen Sonnets and Some Fire Music appeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012. Tom’s website:http://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/

    Also by this poet: “A Better Poem“

  • I Love Broken Things by Kym Cunningham

     

    The walnut man in a broken straw
    hat divined our future in streetside palm fronds
    a          womb
    an oil-derrick apartment and that
    three-legged dog I
    always wanted

    Our children would be beautiful, if only
    they had none of me and all of you
    Your hair your smile
    Your lips your eyes
    Your skin
    Your skin
    Your skin

    I can’t let them be broken too
    So every month, I break the egg
    Watch the yolk
    slide
    down my legs

    Our hatchlings with locked jaws of
    monsters sing

    Tell me, love
    Are we thicker than water

    Kym Cunningham will receive her MFA from San Jose State University with emphases in creative nonfiction and poetry.  She is the lead Nonfiction Editor of Reed Magazine, the oldest literary magazine West of the Mississippi.  She received the Ida Fay Sachs Ludwig Memorial Scholarship and the Academy of American Poets Prize for outstanding achievement in her writing. Her writing has been published in Drunk Monkeys and Reed.

  • Tendril by Taunja Thomson

    Moon inside coyote
    shines from her mouth
    in the pitch of evening.
    Her ears are leaves
    ruffled by a rare wind.
    Her claws as sharp
    as cactus spines.
    She has eaten owl and lizard
    and snake and she knows
    relentless sun    frozen night
    sand and web    flower and blood
    thick blooms that pinwheel
    in day and pray with closed petals
    at night.
    She opens her mouth—her tongue
    a tendril of moonlight
    reaches
    through rock and star.

    Taunja Thomson’s poetry has most recently appeared in Potomac.  Two of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005 and “I Walked Out in January” in 2016.  She has co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry which has recently been accepted for publication and has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter.