The Zingara Project

Category: Zingara Poetry Review: Poetry Picks

  • the shaman sees the Dread Unless by Wayne-Daniel Berard

     didn't need them this time
 White Bear Eagle Sea Turtle
 Ivory Dove
 just directly to the motel room
 himself  sitting at the foot of the bed
 finished and finished and
 entirely seized
 (Merlin and Morgana)
 and you standing to the right
 behind him in
 your black bra and slip
 never looking so lost
 possessed
 by all that losing
    he snapped to
    like a slap
    a mystic
    rear end collision
 lost your number
 and has passed
 you by every day since
 his dearest friend
 quizzical hurt saved

---

Wayne-Daniel Berard, an adoptee who found and embraced his 
Jewishness, teaches English and Humanities at Nichols College, 
Dudley, MA. He is an interfaith clergy person, and co-founding 
editor of Soul-Lit, an online journal of spiritual poetry. He 
lives in Mansfield, MA with his wife, The Lovely Christine.

  • Rest Stop by Allyson Whipple

    ~For Harrison Porobil

    You’ve survived worse odds
    than this: childhood,
    hurricanes, homelessness.
    This time it’s just a broken
    lock that has you stuck
    here, taking stock
    of misfortune. What a way
    to spend Christmas
    morning, trapped on I-10.
    Gas station toilet a stinking
    pen. But no matter
    how you turn and pull
    and push until your muscles
    burn you’re stuck with stale
    air and stink and more time
    than you’d like to think
    about the turning of the year.

    There’s sweat upon your brow
    from fighting with the force
    that holds you in. As it’s always been:
    you’re a man of motion. Kick
    the door open, get in the car.

    —

    Allyson Whipple has an M.A. in English and a black belt in Kung Fu. She is currently studying poetry through the UT-El Paso Online MFA Program. Allyson serves as co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar, and is the author of the chapbook We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are. She teaches at Austin Community College.

    Texas Poetry Calendar 2016

  • Submissions Open Today

    Zingara Poetry Picks seeks submissions of previously unpublished poems (on-line or in print) of 40 lines or fewer for 2016 picks. New, emerging, and established poets are encouraged to submit and all submissions will be given careful consideration.

    Please keep the following in mind when submitting your best poems:

    • Reading period for Zingara Poetry Picks is from August 15 to December 31st. Unless the deadline is extended, submissions received outside of this time period will not be acknowledged or considered. In fact, they will be deleted.
    • There is no fee to submit
    • Title of poem(s) should appear in the email subject line. Poems should be attached as word documents and mailed to zingarapoet@gmail.com
    • The body of the email should include a cover letter and a professional biography of 50 words or fewer written in the third person
    • Attach a word document with no more than three poems of 40 or fewer lines
    • Only one submission at a time (please wait to hear back before submitting more poems)
    • Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let ZingraPoet know immediately if submitted work is accepted elsewhere
    • ZingaraPoet does not accept previously published work
    • Published poets receive bragging rights and the chance to share their work with a diverse audience
    • Poets who are published on Zingara Poetry Pick should wait 24 months before submitting again
    • Do not submit if you have had a poem featured on Zingara Poetry Picks in the last 24 months.
    • Submissions which do not follow these guidelines will be deleted without acknowledgement
    • If accepted work is later published elsewhere, please acknowledge that the piece first appeared as a Zingara Poetry Pick.

    What I look for in a poem:

    Like all editors, I like to see interesting poems that do what they do well. Whether traditional, conceptual, lyrical, or formal, they should exhibit the poet’s clear understanding of craft and, just as importantly, revision. Very elemental poems that have not undergone effective revision will probably not make the cut. Likewise, poems which are contrived, sacrifice meaning for the sake of rhyme, feel incomplete, do not risk sentimentality (or are too sentimental), or lack tension when tension is needed, will also be dismissed. Finally, poems which perpetuate harmful stereotypes of gender, race, or class will most certainly not be considered.

    For a very good discussion on the elements of effective poetry, take a look at Slushpile Musings by James Swingle, publisher and editor of Noneucildean Cafe’

    A note on formatting: poems that contain lines which are flush with the left margin are more conducive to publication on a blog site than those which have unconventional indention or unusual margin settings. Likewise, poems which feature long lines may require additional line breaks or may require the right-scrolling function to be viewed in full.

    Response time is 6 months.

  • Remorse by Gary Beck

    Men of purpled cloisters
    I see your heavy robes of 3:00 a.m.
    guttered on Fifth Avenue
    as the long night passes
    to a woman’s frightened scream.
    O woman who I love
    whose gift is pain,
    in my midnight self
    I cry in secret horror
    at my abusive hands
    which give you hurt.
    If I could tear my granite chest,
    pluck my pulsing love,
    you would see my madness die,
    the marks of cruel fingers fade.

    —

    Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. Published chapbooks include Remembrance, Origami Condom Press; The Conquest of Somalia, Cervena Barva Press; and The Dance of Hate, Calliope Nerve Media, among others. His novel Extreme Change was published by Cogwheel Press and his collection of short stories, A Glimpse of Youth was published by Sweatshoppe Publications. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

    .

  • Klee’s Angel by bz niditch

    Like moving
    the wings
    and cloudletsKlee's Angels
    of our history
    the futurists
    turn back to
    acknowledge
    the high art
    embodied
    in you,
    Angelus Novus
    speak to us
    of all possibilities
    on an unshaven
    earth time span
    where the voice
    of fern and grass
    belongs to us,
    the ocean is clear
    for salmon
    whale and dolphin,
    unpolluted city masks
    now familial
    be removed,
    for wheat and grains
    to again grow
    on threshing floors.

    —

     

  • How I Arrived Here by Karen Neuberg

    When still young, I left
    the safe home of myself
    and ad/ventured into
    a waiting, twisting thread

    of freedom
    and misinformation.
    The original speck of entry
    opened, became my new home,
    where I found

    I wasn’t a total stranger
    to myself. I still carried
    my barriers, my fences, walls,
    doors, battlements, weaponry,

    armor, shields…
    At first, they transported.
    easily as a cloud of feathers;
    but over time they turned
    to stone, to ice.

    What else to do
    but carve and chip
    and make the most
    of sun and rain.

    —

    Karen Neuberg holds an MFA from The New School. Her chapbook, Detailed Still, was published by Poets Wear Prada, and her chapbook, Myself Taking Stage, is newly available from Finishing Line Press.

  • Three Tanka by SuzAnne C. Cole

    summer garden show
    at Hampton Court Palace
    drunk on color
    I pass parking lot sign—
    please stagger your way home

    ***

    travel dilemma—
    walk faint trails, enter dark caves
    trust most strangers
    or stay at Howard Johnson’s
    safe with other tourists

    ***
    young girls yearning
    for status not yet theirs
    pinch off fireflies’ gold
    adorn grimy fingers
    with circlets of light

    —-
    SuzAnne C. Cole writes in the Texas Hill Country. Both a juried and featured poet for Houston Poetry Fest, she’s won a Japanese haiku contest.

  • Leaving Garden Court by Ira Schaeffer

    It was spring, when tulips
    show their pretty colors
    and robins make nests
    for small blue eggs.
    I was ten, feeling cozy
    on the sofa, leafing through
    Mad, when comic book violence
    came alive.

    Driven by another fierce defense
    of some imagined line crossed,
    my parents had attacked
    our upstairs neighbors.
    Shrieks and pounding
    clashed up and down
    our common hall.

    Our door slammed shut.
    I didn’t want to but saw
    my mother’s harrowed
    face and arms,
    my father dripping sweat
    and his panting like a dog.
    There was no place to hide.

    For days, a strange quiet,
    my parents were like ghosts.
    A letter arrived,
    then the cardboard boxes.
    Books and jeans were packed
    along with scars and ruin.
    We were moving to a smaller flat.

    On the way we passed a cemetery
    with branches of dark trees
    hanging above rows of stones.
    I pictured myself underground
    My stone said something sad;
    most of the letters were faded.

    After we got to the new place
    I thought of surprising my parents
    with something funny.
    I crayoned a sign, making a blue
    R.I.P., black for my name and dates
    and red for birds in each corner.
    I held the cardboard to my chest,
    stretched out on the floor—
    shut my eyes and waited.

    —

    Ira Schaeffer is a poet who reads his own poems and those of professional writers in various public venues throughout Rhode Island. His poetry has been published in a variety of small presses.

  • A Classification of Poets by Roy Beckemeyer

    All those poets, with their delicate
    faces, the rote way I relegate
    their taut verses : Alluvial traces,
    Marsupial purses, Tightly coiled cases.

    Their animal hands, their angelic minds,
    the various cants of their labored lines.
    I draw from this strange sonnet’s brevity
    a taxonomic range of verse levity.
    —

    Roy Beckemeyer, from Wichita, Kansas has recently published in The Midwest Quarterly, The North Dakota Quarterly, Nebo, Straylight, and The Bluest Aye. His debut collection of poetry, Music I Once Could Dance To is available from Coal City Press.

  • Quatrina by Neil Fulwood

    A half halved. A quarter moon. The Sign of Four.
    Two slices across the pie chart. I’m sorry; let
    me start again. I’m talking about dividing or
    multiplying by four, the answer or image you get

    by quartering or quadrupling. Or what little you get
    from a quick trawl of the library shelves: The Four
    Feathers, Four Past Midnight, Four Quartets, and let
    us not forget Four Children and It. Why do five or

    seven get the better deal? Enid Blyton and the rich ore
    of children’s fiction, that’s why! If it’s not Five Get
    Kidnapped by Somali Pirates then it’s Seven for
    the Cup, Good Show, Hooray! Give me a break. Let

    me disentangle from their tea-time adventures, let
    the tomboy and the girly-girl get better acquainted, or
    the dog make a break for freedom, run wild, get
    its Jack London funk on. Let anarchy come to the fore

    and words give numbers what for. Yes! And let
    no quarter be asked or given. And let the reader forget.

    —

    Neil Fulwood was born in 1972 and got involved with poetry at an impressionable age. His interests include visiting inns and taverns of architectural interest. Some people confuse this with pub-crawling.

  • Landing Phase by Don Maker

    (dedicated to Space Shuttle Enterprise)

    From out of the endless void we fell at over Mach twenty-five;
    with an L to D of four-to-one, our descent was more of a dive.
    But the stick was dead and the hull was red,
    so we rode her down to the onrushing ground
    and just hoped we would somehow survive.

    At seventeen-thousand feet we began our so-called landing phase,
    and the blessed CPU kicked in without its normal delays.
    So, despite the glows from the blazing nose,
    we could feel some float start around the bird’s throat,
    and we sang that great programmer’s praise.

    We didn’t hit much of a thermal, but then, it doesn’t matter much—
    because she’s a silo with stubs for wings, the bird doesn’t have much touch.
    Since her normal place is flying through space,
    we try not to mind if the landing aren’t kind…
    if they don’t leave us needing a crutch.

    That last roll-reversal left us dead center of the glideslope corridor;
    at twenty degrees and three-hundred knots, the bird is begging for more.
    But the pathy lights have just come into sight,
    and the CRTs swear that it’s time for pre-flare,
    ‘though the vehicle still wants to soar.

    The horizon blazes with whiteness as the sand reflects the sun,
    and we know, one way or another, we’ll soon come to the end of our run.
    With hardly a sound the gear quickly drops down,
    and tension runs high as we drop from the sky
    in a bird that weighs ninety-nine tons.

    We’ve resumed the controls, and it’s time to find out exactly what we’re worth,
    for the place that we’ve been makes us feel we’ve returned to find our soul’s rebirth.
    And when we anoint the long waited touchpoint,
    the drums seem to roll as I say to control:
    “The first spaceship has landed on Earth.”

  • Bathing by Susanna Lang

    Every morning now
    you draw the washcloth down
    my arm, careful not to
    rub too hard—the scar

    is still a little sore.
    You lift my breasts to wash
    beneath, and turn me round
    as if some music played

    and not the shower. You scrub
    my back, invite me out
    into the towel’s blind
    embrace and yours, although

    you see it all—the skin
    that puckers and flakes, an arm
    that will not bring my hand
    to my mouth, or bear a weight.

    Still you get up with tired
    eyes to test the water,
    and make my bath a dance
    to open up the day.
    —

    Susanna Lang’s most recent collection of poems is Tracing the Lines (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013). She lives in Chicago, where she teaches in the Chicago Public Schools.

  • If Januarians Who Dream of June by James Penha

    If Januarians who dream of June
    awake on Ides with centrophobic stress,
    while scientists see over Saturn’s moon
    a future compulsively to obsess,
    then surely some contemporary snake
    has made the apple of the present moot:

    as if we receive a gingerbread cake
    we decline to cut cause it’s all dried fruit!
    or we’re those fans who used to stalk Greta Garbo
    outside Sutton Place in hopes she would play
    her last great scene with us–while the hobo
    round the corner earned Ninotchka’s smile each day.

    Why imagine a ruby in rhinestone
    or trail the scents of the perfect cologne?
    —
    A native New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past twenty years in Indonesia. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and in poetry. No Bones to Carry, a volume of his poetry, the 2007 New Sins Press Editors’ Choice Award. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.

  • 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.