The Zingara Project

Category: Zingara Poetry Review: Poetry Picks

  • Stay-At-Home Mom by Sabina M. Säfsten

    I did not go to work today. But, today was full of work.
    Today I have made a pizza, some muffins, and a hat.
    Also I made changes, friendships, rest, and thoughts, and also
    I ran errands. So many
    errands.

    I also worried about money, and time, and health, and family, and boys.
    Well, boy
    or rather
    the thought that I am loved by someone, and how foreign
    that idea still seems to me.
    But He says it is so. So it must be.

    I ponder such a curious idea, as I change her clothes, and help her with
    the most basic of needs
    and cheer her on when she takes a few steps in a row–
    and then I adjust her oxygen tank so she can
    breathe

    I sleep early, and wake up when I hear her
    crying. I wake her up completely; she can sleep again
    but only after
    pills water blanket nightlight
    oxygen tank
    and a video clip of her grandchildren
    sending their love.

    I tuck her in, return to my chair. I lean back,
    blanket around my shoulders. I start to dream of
    tasks, and chores, and errands and work and         school
    as the whirring of the compressor
    lulls me back to sleep.

    —

    Sabina M. Säfsten is a life-long poet who recently decided to make attempts to be published as an adult. Published as a child writer in multiple poetry anthologies, she took a brief 15-year haitus and earned an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in Family Science. She has since come to her senses and has worked as a professional copywriter for the past 3 years for various clients. She currently works as a writer for a financial education company in Provo, UT, where she lives with her 2 djembes, Daniel and Ebony.

  • Mad Love by Chuck Taylor

    to say a word for our common tabby cat,
    to say a word for Oliver, senile now,
    my friends say, inside always now too,
    after the latest flap with a pack of dogs
    chasing him to a hiding place it took
    three days for him to come out of,
    old gimpy arthritic cat who we found
    in the garage after we bought the house,
    cat who we named Spook at first because
    you rarely saw the ninja warrior streaking
    from the food dish we set under the
    ping-pong table, but now an old purrer
    of laps and sleeping on your head in bed,
    Oliver, who has chosen me, out of some
    cat irrational need, to love best,
    though I never feed, though I have a
    backyard dog I take for country walks
    and have never liked cats, Oliver, lumbering
    across the floor, those large doe eyes
    looking up in mad love, begging an ear rub,
    a neck scratch, Oliver, Oliver, you could love
    my good mate, the one who bathes you
    the one who pulls off your fleas
    and trims your nails–but no, it’s me
    and only me, could it be my fabulous
    finger technique?–come on, give in,
    the mute glowing cat orbs say,
    let me on your lap, take this broken
    love and learn to tolerate
    so you learn to love–
    for you are broken too, eh?
    and mad like me for love

    —

    Chuck Taylor’s first book of poems was published by Daisy Aldan’s Folder Press in 1975. He worked as a poet-in-the-schools and as Ceta Poet in Residence for Salt Lake City.

  • The Year We Learned about Tet by Gary Finke

    This morning, as if the past had unwrapped
    Its greasy sack of regret, I am describing
    How Cecil and I worked as punishment, how,
    After we swept floors and hauled trash to give us
    Humility we both needed, we were noisy with relief,
    And yes, pride that we’d finished ten hours
    For our case of petty, bad college behavior.
    Because it was February, we’d worked
    Something we called the “light shift,” returning
    Our tools in near-dark and standing, for once,
    Among men who worked each weekend at jobs
    They’d never foreseen as boys, laborers
    Who did what was necessary, the work
    We wouldn’t be repeating, not if we
    Used our brains to earn the future’s comfort.

    Those men huddled inside cars they idled
    Toward warmth, windshields clearing from the bottom
    In rising moons.  From the back of campus,
    It was sixteen blocks to where our friends were
    Already lively with beer and music,
    And whether it was the twilight cold or
    The simple solidarity of work,
    One car door opened as “Where to?” offer.
    The two of us crowded beside that man
    On a stiff bench seat, the heater full-blast
    On our feet while Cecil gave directions
    That stopped that driver early, spilling us
    Into the just-beginning snow two blocks
    From our Greek-lettered house, standing in front
    Of the cheap apartments where locals lived
    As if he wanted that maintenance man
    To believe we were not the spoiled sons
    Of distant fathers, able to manage discipline,
    Gesturing in the flurries as if he was already
    Enlisting, his war victim future so close he needed
    To celebrate our small, unimportant work.

    —

    Gary Fincke’s latest collection, The Infinity Room, won the Wheelbarrow Books Prize for Established Poets (Michigan State, 2019). A collection of essays, The Darkness Call, won the Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose and was published by Pleiades Press in 2018.

     

  • Two Girls Sit on a Patchwork Couch by Chloe Kerr-Stein

    Afternoons I visited her, and
    beneath the rainfall on her roof
    cotton blankets wrapped around us I
    drank in each of her syllables. She helped me
    find the right shape with my own tongue,
    giving my hand a squeeze when I got one right.
    Half my words were nonsense. She pretended not to notice.
    I envied her vocabulary, and hoped one day I would be able to
    jinx her with a word like inconsequential or trivial or barbaric and
    know what it meant. You’ve probably guessed I
    loved her. So I stuck around like the smell of
    mulch in her backyard. I remember she took
    me there once to smell the jasmine. She
    never minded when I pronounced the word wrong
    or forgot which flowers are feminine, so I thought she loved me back.
    Pity me. Imagine the
    quiet tears I shed when I finally
    remembered the shape of those words.
    She had helped me sound them out
    thinking they were for someone else.
    Time after time I practiced until the
    vortex of sound opened up to me and on
    Wednesday I told her I loved her and the
    xenial melody of her voice responded
    yes. That’s how you pronounce it.

    —

    Chloe Kerr-Stein will be studying Writing and Literature at UCSB in the fall. She has studied at the California State Summer School for the Arts and the Kenyon Young Writer’s Studio. She has been published in the 826 Quarterly, The Junkyard, and the Bay Area Book Festival’s Youth Poetry Anthology. 

  • A letter to M. F. K. Fisher about Thai leftovers in the morning by Ralph J. Long Jr.

    Mary Frances

    Six empty bottles stand witness to last night’s folly.
    I should be past mornings where alcohol fueled
    camaraderie brings pain and remorse. Cider, wine,
    brandy have left only the soles of my feet without
    complaint. The muted refrigerator light behind curry
    stained boxes pierces, even my eyes are part of the
    litany of distress. To soothe the morning, my friends
    want the full American: Bloody Marys, coffee, eggs,
    toast and bacon. I crave water, not the false reset of
    vodka. The sounds of percolation and frying turn my
    headache into a storm. I bless the soft rain that mutes
    the high-pitched calls of songbirds. I fight the warm
    allure of bed. Sleep must wait until suffering recedes.
    Hope lies in the leftover containers of larb with fish
    sauce and puckering lime; in tiny eggplants napped
    with Thai basil, and chilies and lemongrass nestled in
    noodles ready for a minute of microwave rejuvenation.
    If only recovery was as easy as pressing start.

    I’ll write about the Gravenstein blossoms soon,

    —

    Ralph J. Long Jr. is the author of the chapbook, A Democracy Divided (The Poetry Box, 2018). His work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Poeming Pigeon, The Avocet and the anthology Ambrosia: A Conversation About Food. He graduated from Haverford College and lives in Oakland California.

     

  • A Body in the Body of the Universe by Micki Blenkush

    When I went hungry, I slept less.
    Roused by hummingbirds at 4:00 a.m.
    to add sugar to my blood.

    Today, I rest to the luxury of dozing,
    wait for news of our survival.  Slow bleed
    of light around the shades,

    my mind’s graffitied chug
    like box cars on a train.
    That my skin cracks open feels significant.

    Forced air heat blasting through the vents.
    I buy jugs of distilled water
    to feed my humidifier, take too-long showers

    mouth agape, inhaling the steam.
    Persistent itch, abrasion with bullhorn,
    subcutaneous alarm.

    —

    Micki Blenkush lives in St. Cloud, MN.  She was selected as a 2017-2018 Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series fellow in poetry and was a 2015 recipient of a Central MN Arts Board Emerging Artist Grant.  Her writing has recently appeared in: Cagibi, Typishly, and Crab Creek Review.

  • Then…as Now by KL Frank

    Thought hands a world to you
    separate as a head on a platter.
    But shuffle awhile
    through damp new grass
    and warm wood chips,
    stumble over errant rocks,
    pocket a few illicit pine cones,
    recreate scenes of
    soaked papier-mâché drying,
    skewer miniscule starchy
    sugar lumps on sticks and sear
    over charcoal fires, or
    cook a few squashed
    indecipherable meat patties
    over propane until
    severed images recede.
    Now will become as then
    when right hand and left hand
    were joined at the spine.

    —

    Karin L. Frank’s poems have been published in various literary journals, such as the Rockhurst Review, the Mid-America Poetry Review, the North Dakota Quarterly and New Letters and in various science fiction venues, such as Asimov’s and Tales of the Talisman. No matter the genre, her poems speak women’s voices.

     

     

  • Loss by Sandy Feinstein

    I keep thinking I’ll be able to see in the dark,
    that moonrise or bright Venus will penetrate.
    Maybe if I wash the grit from the windows
    or open them in defiance of winter
    stars could burst through,
    shed light as they fall
    through earth’s indifferent atmosphere
    down, down down.

    Not so much as a flicker’s left for me
    from the arc of unplanned flights.
    Stars die out of the sun’s spotlight
    unremarked.
    Perhaps Palomar finds a skyful
    to name and number,
    mathematically account for each.

    Loss of a single light remains
    forever
    unmeasured,
    immeasurable.
    It’s not enough to know what stars do.

    —

    Sandy Feinstein’s poetry has appeared most recently in Maximum Tilt (2019); in the last three years, her work has appeared in Viator Project, Connecticut River Journal, Gyroscope, Colere, and Blueline, among others.

     

  • Spurious Claims by Mark Tulin

    The sidewalk healer witnessing
    in the house of spurious claims,
    preached faith and transcendence,
    promised miracles with each dollar
    dropped in the collection bucket.

    He gave simple answers
    to all of life’s complex problems
    into one magical moment,
    wrapped in a neatly-tied bow
    and delivered to your door.

    Believe in how the spirit works, he’d say,
    and give you the same line;
    the same worn-out phrases
    as he sermonized yesterday.

    He claims to be a partner
    with the all-knowing,
    a six-figured salesman
    who thumps the podium
    with a lunatic’s conviction
    without caution or delay.

    He’s a rainmaker
    who can’t form clouds,
    a fisherman
    who’s never cast a spinning reel,
    and as much as he kneels and bobs,
    he never could turn water into wine.

    —

    Mark is a former therapist who lives in California.  He has a chapbook, Magical Yogis, and two upcoming books: Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. He’s been featured in Fiction on the Web, Ariel Chart, Amethyst Magazine, among others.  His website is Crow On The Wire.

     

     

  • Taming My Mother’s Tongue by Zoë Christopher

    Living too long in glass houses, careless
    now private thoughts on my lips

    I descend into a fleshy silence conjuring
    my mother’s frayed coyote soul. I can hear

    her splintering howl, barbed tongue lashing
    like teeth into my innocence and needs.

    I could not bolt the door against my ripening,
    she said I came to spoil hers. I would learn

    I could not cradle her feral demons, soothe her
    madness without risking the skin of my bones.

    Now too frail to pounce and strike, she’s lost
    and stumbles toward me, a plea in her silence.

    We sit and pray together until the old camellia
    leaves of my childhood glisten in the night rain

    and the moon coaxes golden shadows from
    the dampened scent of winter viburnum.

    And so the sluicing begins, the eloquence
    of water taming my mother’s tongue.

    —

    Zoë Christopher is a photographer and writer who published her first poem at 16. Soon after she was sidetracked, putting food on the table as an ice-cream truck driver, waitress, medical assistant, addictions counselor, astrologer, art installer, bookseller, Holotropic breathworker, and trainer of psychospiritual crisis support. (She didn’t get paid for milking goats, teaching photography, or raising her son!) She holds a Masters in transpersonal psychology, and spent 20+ years working in adolescent and adult crisis intervention and support. Her work has appeared in print in great weather for MEDIA, and online in The Writing Disorder and WordsDance.

  • A letter to Campbell McGrath about Polaroids at a yard sale by Ralph Long Jr.

    Campbell

    An unleashed Dalmatian is never a good idea at a
    yard sale. Barking chaos, toppled tables, a box of
    Polaroids scattered. Bow-tied boys, girls in print
    dresses, squinting Sunday-best parents strewn like
    autumn leaves on the still-green lawn. A woman
    chases the errant dog. Her daughter guards the cash
    box, offers me the photos for a nickel each if I spare
    her the chore of picking them up. She finds no value
    in the once-precious moments that are fading into
    chimera as chemicals decay. Edwin Land’s promised
    hundred years of color already spectral. There are no
    images worthy of Adams’ Yosemite or Wegman’s
    Weimaraners. A few arcade booth strips amid the
    mess capture a vitality, a reality missing in the others.
    I don’t know what happened to all the old photos of
    my family. I wonder if the parents in these ones are
    still arguing about the thermostat, children, television
    channels. Or if the photos are the detritus of divorce,
    death? Do you think this LBJ era ephemera is worthy
    of preservation when so much else is disappearing?

    I bought a dollar’s worth of photos, I can’t say why.

    —
    Ralph J. Long Jr. is the author of the chapbook, A Democracy Divided (The Poetry Box, 2018). His work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Poeming Pigeon, The Avocet and the anthology Ambrosia: A Conversation About Food. He graduated from Haverford College and lives in Oakland California.

  • Fortune by Dana Delibovi

    We were drunk. Night-streets glittered from the glass
    alloyed with tar in asphalt. The humid air
    amplified every car-alarm and laugh.

    A second-floor psychic lit her neon sign.
    Up the stairs, we found her coaxing music
    from an old radio, her table spread

    with trinkets molded for the craft of longing.
    What she divined, I can’t recall. We left
    as sweepers drove and taverns locked their doors.

    Maybe she foretold our sheets and showers,
    when morning stunned us, and we went to work
    still drunk, through city streets unjeweled by day.

    —

    Dana Delibovi is a poet living in Missouri. Her poems have appeared in The Formalist, Mid Rivers Review, Orphic Lute, Red Tape, Spirituality & Health, and the Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion series. She is the recipient of the 2014 and 2019 James Haba Award for poetry.

     

     

  • A Dog’s Life by Anne Whitehouse

    Come down to the lake with me.
    Real winter is here at last,
    ice crystals and freezing fogs,
    the sun so bright it hurts my eyes.

    Veils of mist like gossamer silk
    drift over snow that blows over ice
    where our dogs chase after each other,
    making the most of what they have,
    be it a stick or a snowbank.

    —

    Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Meteor Shower (Dos Madres Press, 2016). She has also written a novel, Fall Love, which is now available in Spanish translation as Amigos y amantes by Compton Press. Recent honors include 2017 Adelaide Literary Award in Fiction, 2016 Songs of Eretz Poetry Prize, 2016 Common Good Books’ Poems of Gratitude Contest, 2016 RhymeOn! Poetry Prize, 2016 F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Poetry Prize. She lives in New York City. www.annewhitehouse.com

     

  • A Spring of Loss by Shearle Furnish

    Grassfires skirt the west edge of town.
                    The sirens sound like far-off geese.
                     I miss the rain.

    Apricot trees wear their full crown of white
                   Too early — late frosts will steal the crop,
                   And I will miss the fruit.

    The breeze, the chimes, the birds are still,
                    The feeders empty and unvisited.
                    In the pleasant air of evening, I miss the song.

    —

    Shearle Furnish is retired as Professor of English and Founding Dean of the College of Arts, Letters, and Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and taught English for 33 years in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Texas. Furnish also served in administration at Youngstown State University before moving to Arkansas.

  • Six Poems for Autumn from the ZPR Archives

    As autumn colors fade to bare limbs and stark skies, take a few minutes to contemplate these autumnal poems previously published on Zingara Poetry Review:

    The Last Massacre in my Lonely Notebook by David Spicer

    November, 1993 by Jenn Powers

    Squall by Jennifer Lagier

    Forecast by Amanda Banner

    Softly by Carol Alena Aronoff

    Sleeping with Squirrels by Tracy Mishkin