The Zingara Project

Category: Zingara Poetry Review: Poetry Picks

  • Fleeting Life by Lola Eagle

    Our days are bounded by our dream as night is bounded by the stars;
    Our world expands or shrinks in size as it is seen through hopeful eyes.

    Each hour of Life begins and ends in minutes that so soon are gone;
    To capture one and hold it fast is but a whim and cannot last.

    The golden minutes we would keep are fleeting just as all the rest;
    The mournful minutes stretch and grow; yet sixty seconds each they hold.

    When nighttime flees we come awake to find another chance awaits;
    The morning brings us hours to use; how they are filled is ours to choose.

    With hopeful hearts our days evolve from black of night to bloom of day;
    And whether such is gold or bleak depends on how we act and speak.

    Thus, form your day howe’er you will, for what we do reflects our soul;
    Giving to others what we seek returns to us a Life unique.

    —

    Lola R. Eagle is a free-lance writer, author and poet living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Her work has been published in national magazines, anthologies, and on-line sites, as well as her own books — From the Eye of an Eagle and More Visions in Verse.”

  • Thoughts While Reading Kierkegaard (The Cupboard, 1841) by Katherine DeBlassie

    His coat hangs, Regine,
    like a cassock and hides his wooden leg.
    The clock sounds; the sign of his father
    he carries on his back—

    He loved the cupboard. Wanted your
    body inside it more than you did.
    Acknowledge the things inside it (agony, pseudonyms . . .)
    but have the opposite in mind.

    He quakes underneath his umbrella,
    pushing against the tic-toc, the daily
    calendar, the other darker days.
    The little hand goes up the body.

    The big great big hand is paralyzed.
    He is the earth, you give him a glance, a nod,
    at Vespers on Easter Sunday,
    and he is struck by losing you (by looking at you),

    weighted by the gravity that pulls him to a higher order—
    sun, moon, planets, palisander box with no shelves;
    precursor to a casket. Vellum manuscript: one for him and
    one for you. Let him turn you into something else—

    —

    Katherine DeBlassie’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming in B O D Y, Inch, Zone 3, Tidal Basin, Court Green, Boxcar Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Cutthroat among others. She earned her MFA from the University of Maryland. She received an honorable mention for the 2011 Rita Dove Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the 2009 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and received Work-Study Scholarships for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

     

  • Walt Whitman’s House in Camden, New Jersey by Frank Higgins

    Searching down the burnt out streets
    as if driving through World War II Dresden,
    we pull up to the curb to ask a man directions,
    but he calls us dead meat and we speed away
    past hookers and kids who throw rocks,
    and finally we find Walt Whitman’s house
    like a war-time safe house behind the lines,
    but the door’s locked; we ring the bell
    and wait in the locked car
    till a woman opens the door and welcomes us
    and we try to ignore her knife scar from cheek to chin
    as she guides us to the guest book
    where we notice we’re the first guests in three days,
    and she leads us from room to room
    and shows us his desk, and says,
    “This is where he wrote,”
    and we stand staring at Whitman’s desk
    and recite our favorite lines:
    “Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road,”
    “I hear America singing,”
    “I sing the body electric,”
    “And now conceive and show to the world
    what your children en-masse really are,
    (for who except myself has yet conceiv’d
    what your children en-masse really are?)”
    but we’re interrupted by excited voices
    and we look out to see kids kicking our car
    and without a word our guide calls the cops
    and after the kids run from the siren
    we run to our car and take to the open road,
    crossing the Delaware in full retreat
    in a way Washington or Whitman
    or even Jack Kerouac could not conceive:
    a huddled mass yearning to breathe free
    by gunning our engine behind locked doors,
    and with the cops on speed dial.

    —

    Frank Higgins has had plays produced across the country.  He is also the author of two books of poetry and two books of haiku.

  • My Son’s Renaissance By Melissa Zamites

    After the illness
    Years of night
    Only flashes of dawn

    My son’s joys re-emerge
    Dandelions through cracked concrete

    I’m giddy and laughing like a drunk and weeping
    Stumbling through town with a slap happy grin
    Because nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen
    And Lordy troubles don’t last always!

    God’s turned back the clock
    My son’s twelve on the outside
    And maybe four on the inside
    It’s back to story time with the preschoolers
    And learning conversation

    Stare if you want
    But my son is back in the land of the living
    Tickled and giggling
    Swinging in the park
    Running through the zoo

    Sometimes nightmares
    Strike again by day
    My son’s terror returns
    He is lost in a tunnel
    My eyes reach in and pull him up
    My arms are his tree to climb out

    Snowflakes streak the sky
    But in our house
    The floor is fertile green ground
    The eggshell is breaking
    The foal is shaking and standing
    And the lamb of merciful sunrise
    Has turned the lion back into a house cat

    —

  • Pier Park by Becca Yenser

    Mother,
    how did they
    destroy the neighborhood
    soul by soul
    on the street
    of children’s chalk
    I am still
    remembering the trees
    I guess it was a forest That one guy went missing
    and then the other guy got shot
    Oh my stars
    My mom
    My poor dog
    Who believes
    every word I say:
    I’ll report what I can,
    just as soon as I know.

    —

    Becca Yenser works and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her words have appeared in: kill author, Knee-Jerk Magazine, and Filter Literary Journal. Forthcoming is a semi-fictional, quasi-tour guide of Ms. Pac Man machines in Portland. She likes paying attention.

  • Letters From Home by Steven Hamp

    Sometimes,
    the routine is broken,
    allowing room
    to understand
    the creativity
    that shows itself
    in brilliant style.

    Often,
    the information provides
    a sense of time
    to discover
    the caring
    that is celebrated
    in grateful joy.

    Always,
    the expression is open,
    giving insight
    to recognize
    the courage
    that is measured
    in personal strength.

    —

    Steven Hamp is a photographer, writer, and poet who has resided in New Mexico since 1981.  He has been published in various local publications.  His poetry was recently selected as part of the 200 New Mexico Poems on-line collection, and has appeared on-line at the Duke City Fix. He currently lives in Albuquerque.

  • Phoenix by Odarka Polanskyj Stockert

    on the cusp of morning
    a new day a new
    beginning

    cleared of fog and snow
    you rise
    a phoenix
    renewed and recreated

    the winds blow across your wings
    ruffling you feathers
    and the sleet
    taps out your name

    you rise above the trees
    see clearly for the first time and survey
    the whole of your world
    finally alight upon a
    barren branch

    and sleep
    and dream
    what words
    will not portray

    —

    Odarka Polanskyj Stockert is a New Jersey native poet and and long time member of South Mountain Poets. She is also a long time collaborator of the Yara Arts Group, resident at the La  Mama, etc. in New York City and has performed in many Yara poetry and experimental theater events and productions. Odarka is a harpist, poet and songwriter, an engineer and inventor.  She lives in Millburn, with her family.  Visit her Website: http://www.myspace.com/odarkasharp.

  • Small Circles by Colleen Maynard

    The fog has shellacked
    over the warmth felt this morning.
    Mist turns to rain.
    Along the vinyl canopies
    a strip of raised drops form,
    solid as brass-studs
    on the seams of fancy
    upholstered chairs.

    I might sew
    the torn seams of my coat.
    I will not go swimming.
    I may take a small nap,
    and work on either
    my life or my art.

    When there is nothing else to do,
    I lock the door to pace.
    I recall Jesse,
    the way he’d walk small circles
    in the center of his studio,
    head down,
    glaring at the wood
    as though it might
    loosen the floorboards
    and release some
    slight sigh.

    —

    Colleen Maynard is a writer and visual artist. She holds a degree from the Kansas City Art Institute and has publications in Monkeybicycle, The Same magazine, and Ceramics: Art and Perception.”

  • Valentine by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

    Valentine

    It’s all a matter of seeing what is right here:
    the face of the beloved, the eyes closed,
    graying lashes on the cheekbone. The eyes
    open, blue washed into green, changing
    in light and time. It is all necessary as
    time or how remembering changes
    the face, looking to see what comes
    turns the head. It is all a matter of thinking,
    What are you thinking? When did it start,
    how can it end when the weight, the lightness
    of this seeing makes the familiar new,
    the unknown an old friend? It is all right
    on the cusp of the horizon: deepening
    blue folding back into orange behind the tree
    behind you. It is all a matter of seeing
    in the delicate and wild space between us
    that isn’t really space at all, how whatever
    we know can be erased and remade with the other.
    How our time is not a force rushed through us,
    but a kind of valentine we can open right now,
    in the eyes of the other.

    —

    Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the Poet Laureate of Kansas, and the author or editor of 16 books, including a novel, The Divorce Girl (Ice Cube Books); a non-fiction book, Needle in the Bone: How a Holocaust Survivor and Polish Resistance Fighter Beat the Odds and Found Each Other (Potomac Books); The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community & Coming Home to the Body (Ice Cube Books); the anthologies An Endless Skyway: Poetry from the State Poets Laureate (co-editor, Ice Cube Books) and Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems (editor, Woodley Press); and four poetry collections. Founder of Transformative Language Arts – a master’s program in social and personal transformation through the written, spoken and sung word – at Goddard College where she teaches, Mirriam-Goldberg also leads writing workshops widely, and with singer Kelley Hunt, writing and singing retreats. www.CarynMirriamGoldberg.com

  • The Baltimore Catechism – Unrequited Love by Roy Beckemeyer

    The granite girl stands to recite.

    Catechism quotes limn the inside
    of her eyelids.

    Her fingernails
    spike her hands to her thighs.

    She prays for Rorschach stigmata
    to stain her virginal palms.

    Her insatiable need
    is for the sainthood of white doves.

    Her face aches
    for the crescent moon purity
    of wimple and coif.

    “The desire for God is written
    in the human heart,” she intones,
    thinking all the while
    I am a good Catholic girl,
    I am God’s innocent girl,
    I am the girl of the incised granite heart.

    —

    Roy Beckemeyer of Wichita, Kansas has most recently had poems accepted by the periodicals America, The Lyric, and The Journal of Civic Leadership and the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties.

  • January haiku by Frank Higgins

    past the gorging gulls,
    a few more baby turtles
    hurry to the sea
    —

    Frank Higgins has had productions of his plays across the country.   He is the author of two books of poetry, and two books of haiku.  He lives in Kansas City, Mo.

  • January Photographs by Mary Dudley

    January looms large-
    a huge floe on the sea
    of the early year.
    Thick, translucent ice
    under which the crocus sleep.

    January mornings dawn
    as a pink blush in a crystalline sky.
    The sun warms as hours pass
    but noon still glares, brilliantly cold.

    January’s dusk descends early
    and its sun burns orange and red
    setting behind the bare-branched tangle
    of the back-yard trees.

    January’s cold thickens
    as the world darkens:
    It seeps under the door frame,
    pushes us into the circle of
    the warmest room,
    hangs over the haven of our bed
    like a cold fog
    that morning won’t burn off.

    January looms large—
    a month to reckon with.

    —

    Mary Dudley has written poems since childhood. She studied poetry before moving to NM in 1968, and changing her professional focus to family and child development. She’s published two chapbooks and her work has been included in the Rag, the NM Center for Peace & Justice Newsletter and calendar, la Llorona, Sin Fronteras, and 200 New Mexic Poems.

  • Song for Aishan by Wayne Lee

    Red candles, red roses around you now—
    scatter of petals across the floor, on your coat
    like paw prints against the snow, curl
    of birch bark, bed of fox fur under your head.

    Aishan, Kirgi for Moon Heart, grandson
    of the wind and moon—we sing your crossing
    on a renegade gust.

    Shanadii—shaman granddaughter of Geronimo—
    named you stonecarrier of her Earth circle,
    gifted the stone in a medicine pouch,
    placed it on your chest as you lay in repose.

    Today in this circle of stone, this cycle of wind
    and moon, we sing Ohila—Apache crossing song—
    sing it to the six directions.

    You crouched at the edge, waited for your two-legged
    to let you go, so you could cross
    from her arms, a Bodhisattva in wolf body—
    carried on the wind, gray legs twitching as in dreamtime.

    ***

    Wayne Lee (wayneleepoet.com) is an educator/journalist living in Santa Fe, NM. Lee’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Press, The New Guard, Sliver of Stone, Slipstream, and other publications.

  • Inception by Joanne Bodin

    It’s a tiny drop of dew on a blade of grass after a rainstorm
    that won’t let you shift your focus until it burrows into your subconscious
    with tangled images that call out to you
    then it disappears for awhile
    but you know it’s still there,  the melancholy thoughts
    still disjointed pulling at you to give them life
    to tell their story untill they weigh you down with abandon
    you try to convince yourself that it’s not your story
    but then the tidal wave, no longer a tiny drop of dew
    envelopes your subconscious and debris of human suffering wash along
    the shore of your mind and interrupt your every day routine
    then it disappears for awhile
    until you are sitting at the Sixth Street Cafe with your writing pad, pen
    cup of Moroccan dark roast coffee
    the sound of rain pellets on the picture window
    in the corner of your wooden booth
    the drone of a train whistle tunnels into your subconscious
    and synapses begin firing away
    a train roars by
    rain mixed with snow blurs your vision and you look out of the window
    see the ghostly shadow of the red caboose as it disappears into the mist
    suddenly the fog lifts
    you see distant sun drenched fields of poppies and columbine
    the entire story now unfolds and you know everyone so well
    their stature, their favorite foods, their deepest secrets
    and your hand begins to write- you dribble words onto
    paper like creamy butterscotch candy in metaphors of longing
    of pain and  euphoria that dance with you in a
    tango of sentences and the floodgates open
    you stay with them until the finish, not to win the race
    but to honor their presence, and the heaviness lifts
    your muse gives you a creative wink
    and runs off to romp in her fields of glory.

    —

    Joanne Bodin is a retired teacher of the gifted in New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum Instruction and Multi-Cultural Teacher Education. Her latest novel, Orchid of the Night, is a dark psychological thriller about a man running from his troubled past who finds solace in the gay community of Ixtlan. It won the 2017 New York City Big Book Award as “distinguished favorite” in GBLT fiction. It also won the 2017 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award in GBLT fiction and placed as “favorite” in three other categories.
    Visit her website at http://www.joannebodin.com for updates

  • Night Owl by Ann Neelon

    This poem comes from Ann Neelon’s first collection of poetry, “Easter Vigil,” which won the 1995 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Joy Harjo, judge of that year’s contest, say’s this about Ann Neelon’s collection:

    It is rare to come upon a poet with such a wide ranging vision as Ann Neelon. She’s a risk taker with heart, a poet who in in the world as a compassionate observer. The poem’s deserve your attention.

    Night Owl by Ann Neelon

    From you, I inherited this starry flesh, The night is young, the night is young — my voice is your voice in endless mimicry. Thirty years ago, sleepless and hungry for quarry, I caught you drinking milk of magnesia, staring into the kitchen sink as into a deep well, Father, if you had jumped in, I would have had to follow. How many times I space-walked toward you across the pock- marked moonfloor, triumphant in my pajamas before the less courageous world, Gravity was your unfailing argument: just what, young lady, do you think you’re doing up? Tonight, bills unopened, heart too in arrears, I remember how the muscles in your face relaxed. To ease your cares, it was enough for you to know that I didn’t have any. And so we discussed kindergarten, the moon and the stars. — Ann Neelon is a native of Boston and a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and of Holy Cross College. She has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa, as well as a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford Univeristy.