The Zingara Project

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  • Silent Night Broken Night by Patrick Cabello Hansel

    María stumbles on the road
    into town and falls, baby first
    on the baked earth.  José
    stares at his virgin bride,
    his exile, his horn of plenty. He crouches
    to help her up, but she shouts “No!”
    He must apologize for the strange
    look in his eyes, for handling her
    like a stone the moment he first
    knew her weight.  The stars,

     pin pricks on the skin
    of heaven, look down: here
    are the children of earth, frozen
    in the wounding that precedes hope.
    No words redeem the time,
    or take the pain away.  There is
    sinew and bone break and breath.

     María and José look at each other
    in the last dirt before Bethlehem.
    Their eyes are cradles where no child
    has yet been lain.  José nods,
    leans María into his shoulder,
    and as the two rise as one, her water
    breaks onto her robes and his,
    his feet and hers, the dust, the stone,
    the river under it all.

    They walk, quicker now.  No donkey,
    no angel, no choir.  Just the hurried
    birth racing like wind. This child
    will not wait for shelter,
    his name rushes headlong
    through the dark tunnel
    that billows into waiting hands.

    There is hay and straw enough.
    His skin will be wrapped
    in the softest cloth.  Poor men
    will bring songs. No house
    dare hold this child.

    —

    Patrick Cabello Hansel has published poems in over 40 journals, including Isthmus, Red Weather Review, Ash & Bones and Lunch Ticket. His novella “Searching” was serialized in 33 issues of The Alley News and his book of poetry “The Devouring Land” will be published March 2019 by Main Street Rag Publishing. 

  • Invocation // The Beast That Resides in the Acute Angle by Gregory Kimbrell

    The cabbie’s right hand travels the warm flank
    of his unharnessed stallion, the striped woolen

    muffler still pulled tight across his mouth, as if
    to prevent himself from speaking aloud any of

    the things that come into his mind after a long
    day of work, before walking back down empty

    streets to his shared room. The turpentine has
    soaked through the earth floor at the west end

    of the stable, where a clever boy who ran away
    from home when he was still only fifteen used

    to sleep in the hay every night. But even when
    the world seems to forget us, the memories of

    what we have done can seldom be rubbed out
    completely. And sometimes the kids who look

    far older than they are loiter behind the bolted
    door to smoke, for kicks setting on fire unsold

    newspapers and watching them burn up in the
    rain barrel, wishing they could cause real harm.

    —

    Gregory Kimbrell is the author of The Primitive Observatory (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Manticore—Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities, Phantom Drift, and elsewhere.

  • Northwoods Christmas Orphans by Nancy Austin

    We caved to the kids visiting in-laws on the real holiday.
    No, not chopped liver, I reassure my husband, coax a scarf
    into his ungloved hands, point to crystalline aspen and hoar-frosted
    huckleberry under the just-shaken snow globe sky.

    Tires crunch a path around the lake, a doe darts across the wooded drive.
    We kick off boots in a knotty-pine kitchen fragrant with cardamom, bacon, vanilla.
    Winnie whips up her cream cheese frosting, mammoth cinnamon swirls yield
    to our knives thick with sweet butter cream.
    Emily, energizer bunny of this geriatric cohort, converses too quickly to think
    between gasps of air, My friend can’t see with her immaculate generation.

    We gather around their woodstove after breakfast.
    Emily’s husband Ray recalls the year their Ford Fairlane
    broke down near a rural tavern/general store,
    Emily fills in every other phrase before he can finish.
    Bologna at the bar. Crackers that Christmas.
    Winnie and Ron remember a holiday alone,
    Rotisserie chicken with our fingers in the parking lot.
    They held one another’s gaze like a warm hand,
    as if to reaffirm life’s slights and disappointments
    form the glue that bonds, that comforts.
    I nodded to my husband with that same knowing glance.
    He narrowed his eyes, muttered chopped liver.

    —

    Nancy Austin has lived on both coasts, but prefers the land between. She relishes time to write in the Northwoods. Austin’s work has appeared in Adanna, Ariel, Gyroscope Review, Midwestern Gothic, Portage Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Poets Calendars. Her poetry collection is titled Remnants of Warmth (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2016).

  • Predictable Patterns by Laurinda Lind

    I can’t stay centered on the winter solstice
    even in its most ancient aspect and certainly
    not its spendthrift one but when I was young,
    boxes of attic bulbs determined December

    along with trees that don’t belong inside
    and won’t stay up, but mean it isn’t always
    going to be this dark and cold, we’ll see
    ground again without snow. After years

    of take-apart trees and malevolent demented
    light strings I have failed in the Christmas
    category, either neglecting the tree till
    it shredded to the touch in April and could

    be scattered in the yard over leaves I never
    raked in the fall, or not putting one up at all
    so my daughter would come home from
    college and sigh and put it up herself, and

    once opened all my CDs. Stuck them on
    the branches where they shone silver like
    a Jetsons tree, assuming they would still
    have trees in that century, that the seasons

    will mean something after this terrible time
    where we are now, this dark we are not
    sure will take us through to spring, no
    matter how much tinsel we throw to it.
    —

    Laurinda Lind’s poems are in Another Chicago Magazine, Blue Earth Review, Blueline, Comstock Review, Constellations, Main Street Rag, and Paterson Literary Review; also anthologies Visiting Bob [Dylan] (New Rivers) and AFTERMATH (Radix). In 2018, she won the Keats-Shelley Prize for adult poetry and the New York State Fair poetry competition.

  • Copenhagen Morning by Darwin Pappas-Fernandes

    Eyes still sleepshod, I had myself almost convinced:

    the rooftops I see from my window, a church spire brave against the sky—
    it was the view from the fourth floor balcony of Vestergade 23,
    buildings swirled away in dimming snow.
    The day I was early to class, and she was early to class:
    the two of us alone with the city.
    She stepped sure through the window to me, touched
    my shoulder. I pulled my scarf down and away
    from my lips to say, what a beautiful morning,
    and she agreed.
    It wasn’t just a beautiful morning; looking at her
    against the soft dove sky, it was a beautiful view.
    We looked for the sun behind its barricade of cloud cover,
    we looked for hooded crows, grey and black, pointing for each other.
    I sensed her eyes on my cheek though we stood shoulder to shoulder,
    taking apart the paradigm by proximity.
    Peeking through the haze outside,
    I woke thinking Denmark was here, that I was there,
    not knowing, at first, how many years had passed. 

    —

    Darwin Pappas-Fernandes works in the Publishing industry in New York City. She graduated from Smith College in 2017, having majored in English and American Studies, with a Concentration in Poetry. Writing, and writing poetry in particular, has been a passion of hers since childhood.

  • After Words by Joseph Somoza

    I open your book of words
    to any page
    and begin reading,
    though, now, you too
    are dead like the others,
    another dead writer.
    There’s no way
    I’d be able to find you
    in New York, and,
    over coffee, ask you
    what you meant,
    where you were,
    when you wrote that.
    The words
    have to make do
    on their own now,
    which is what you hoped for
    in the first place
    when setting them down—
    ball-point in hand
    in your study, looking
    out at the street
    through upper-story windows,
    probably wondering where
    you might go walking
    afterwards.

    —

    Joseph Somoza retired from college teaching some years ago to have more time for writing.  He’s published ten books and chapbooks of poetry over the years, most recently AS FAR AS I KNOW (Cinco Puntos Press, 2015).  He lives in Las Cruces with wife Jill, a painter.

  • The Gift by Mary C. Rowin

    A dream that among things
    on offer I select a pair
    of light green baby socks.

    They are cotton, folded flat
    with some eyelet stitching
    around the edge of the cuff

    and like the Christmas cookie
    you bring home from the bank
    for me, wrapped in a paper napkin,

    I fold the socks and push them
    into my jacket pocket. Protective.
    To save for later.  Or to share.

    As if I could hold you in my palm
    like a small gift I chose for myself.

    —

    Mary C. Rowin’s poetry has appeared in various publications such as Hummingbird, Panopoly, Solitary Plover, Stoneboat and Oakwood Literary Magazine.  Mary’s poem “Centering,” published in the Winter 2018 issue of Blue Heron Review, has been nominated for the Push Cart Anthology.  Recent awards include poetry prizes from The Nebraska Writers Guild and from Journal from the Heartland, plus Honorable Mentions from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and Wisconsin People and Ideas.  Mary lives with her husband in Middleton, Wisconsin.

  • Winter Decoration by Frances Rove

    At the juncture of two branches,
    Blown by the wind and bounced about,
    Sits a small nest to take its chances
    And try to ride the winter out.

    Simple and barren, mud and leaves,
    Twigs and yet something else besides.
    Jostled by the stiff Northern breeze.
    Who can spy what soul in their hides?

    Is that tinsel waving madly
    On the too early budding tree?
    Frost will surely nip it badly.
    Far too optimistic are thee.

    But did the cold bird decorate,
    Choosing tinsel from other trash,
    To please his tiny, feathered mate
    With silver woven in their stash?

    I venture closer, I must know.
    Is it a trick of light or true?
    Is tinsel woven in or no?
    Surely, such a wise bird could do.

    YES, tinsel from our Christmas time,
    Chosen by some light-hearted bird.
    Woven in the sweet nest sublime
    And then undone without a word.

    Unraveled by the frigid winds
    Of the long, lonely winter nights.
    Is it like mere string, as it bends,
    Or is tinsel bird’s soul delight?

    Silver sparkles under the Moon,
    Chosen with purpose by the bird?
    Decoration fades all too soon.
    Wind whips, tinsel flies, all unheard.

    —

    Frances Rove is fifty-eight-year-old attorney on disability due to bipolar disorder who is writing a memoir and haas written poetry and short stories since grade school. She belongs to the National Association of Memoir Writers and Mensa and enjoys advocacy for mental health and adoption issues and for animals.

  • Christmas 2015 by Ujjvala Bagal Rahn

    ~(Tybee Beach)

    Under winter’s diamond night
    cross the shore of sunburnt youth.
    Underneath the ocean’s roar
    sighs our baby’s scattered dust.
    Denting gentle sands, our girl’s
    toddler feet made turtle trails
    lead you through the windy chill.
    Soon you’ll see us, far away
    underneath the shivering moon.
    Cradled in my hands, your gift
    wrapped in time’s dichroic foil.

    —

    Ujjvala Bagal Rahn’s poems have appeared most recently in Möbius: The Journal of Social Change, Frogpond, and Poetry in the Air (Jan. 21, 2015, WHCJ, Savannah State University). Her micropress, Red Silk Press (poetry, science, science fiction and memoir), has supported the Savannah Spoken Word Festival, Asian Festival, and Local Author Day.

  • Marilyn Monroe by Ellen Saunders

    We applaud, adore and adorn
    the holiday tree in Rockefeller Plaza,
    embellish its natural beauty
    and render it unrecognizable.
    When its brief stint in the starlight
    is over, the man-made magic
    gone, we’ll carry it to place far
    from view. Reluctantly, we’ll return
    to our tired selves, all the while knowing
    that there’s always next year. Another tree
    that once held a winter’s worth of snow
    in its arms. Another star on the horizon.
    Another chance to build up and tear down.
    The possibilities are endless.

    —

    Ellen Saunders’ work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Toronto Quarterly, Calyx, Pearl, Apple Valley Review, among others. Her first chapbook, Masquerad” was published by Long Leaf Press. She is currently working on a second collection.

  • The Winter Finch by Markus Egeler Jones

    Around the steps the trees bend
    singing themselves to sleep
    in the bending time of early winter.

    Finches strain their necks
    fluffing and fluttering
    in the snowing, blowing afternoon.

    Cars down the road rumble past
    vibrating the air like new
    woofers at the downtown cinema.

    The finches jump with whispery
    anticipation clinging to feathers
    before they mingle into nightfall.

    It is a comfortable cold
    through the wind and snow
    stars are ornaments hidden by clouds.

    The cars muffle now and whether
    darkness or clouds or the quiet
    of a starless night, they drive softly.

    Even the fir trees are gone hiding
    behind the dark curtain of snowfall and steps
    the finches vanished without notice.

    —

    Markus Egeler Jones graduated with Eastern Kentucky University’s MFA. He is an Assistant Professor at Chadron State College. His first novel, How the Butcher Bird Finds Her Voice, was published by Five Oaks Press. His fiction and poetry appear in New Mexico Review, Crab Fat Magazine, The Story Shack, Temenos.

  • American Tradition by Elizabeth Perdomo

    Forget
    those black
    bottom-line day
    specials. This is
    the real deal reason:
    Coffee & conversation
    & New York TV parades;
    dried bread crumbled &
    vegetables well chopped,
    sautéed amidst savory seasons,
    parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme,
    stuffed into a plump, thawed
    turkey, set to roast within
    an over full capacity oven.
    houses smell like home;
    Holiday scents & sweet
    potato aromas mingle
    into a green bean meld;
    red cranberry relish,
    sweet & tart & cool,
    a blend held at ready,
    while pecan pieces
    & pumpkin orange
    become skillfully
    transformed into
    fragrant memory
    crusted pies.

    —

    Elizabeth Perdomo has lived and written in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas these past sixteen years, moving to this region from the Rio Grande Valley of northern New Mexico. Born in Kansas and raised both there and in Colorado, she has written poetry works since a young teen. Perdomo also lived in the Southeastern USA for many years, where she married and her 3 daughters were born. Perdomo has been an active member of the South Texas Border Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist since 2016. Her written pieces reflect her passion to learn about local places, culture and tradition, as well as gardening, ecology, nature and much more. Perdomo is the author of a book of poetry about the people and places in East Tennessee entitled, “One Turn of Seasons” and has had a number of poems published in periodicals, chap books andcollections, including a recently published collection entitled, “Kansas Time + Places.”

  • December by Sharon Scholl

    i

    The cottonwoods come down
    last among the shedders,
    come in piles like leather napkins
    folded brown and gold.
    Wind swirls them into speckled hills,
    mattresses for leaping children.
    I’ve watched the cutting loose
    as each twig cast its fate on air,
    the whole like silent snow,
    space a-flutter with gentle death.

    ii

    There are things we can’t hold onto,
    joys that slip from our bodies
    at the stroke of time.
    They float quietly away
    beyond the comfort of grief. We pull
    them from our minds, bend over them
    like firelight, warming old bones
    in the radiance of what used to be.

    —

    Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor of humanities and international studies. Her recently published chapbooks include Summer’s Child (Finishing Line Press) and EAT SPACE (Poet Press). She convenes A Gathering of Poets, critique group of a dozen local poets celebrating our twelfth anniversary.

  • Advent by Lynda Fleet Perry

    ~ for Mark

    From the farm’s back field the wind is rising
    as we walk, holding hands, to cut our tree
    in the crisp night air. The moon is rising

    over the skeletal tips of branches, forking
    into the gathering dark. We can see,
    from the farm’s back field, the wind rising

    by the way the old cedar moans, tossing
    its now-black foliage, as if to shake free.
    On this solstice night, the moon’s rising

    arc holds Venus—glimmering and winking—
    at celestial arms’ length. They’re married
    above the farm’s back field—wind rising

    as if to rush the inevitable coupling
    of sickle and orb, a brilliant zenith
    of this longest night. The moon is rising

    higher. Now we can see the tree, leaning
    crookedly, our Yule pine, its shadow spindly
    in the moon’s silver light.  Night has risen
    over the farm’s back field. The wind still rises.

    —

    Lynda Fleet Perry is the author of a chapbook of poems, At Winter Light Farm, published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. Her work has been published in Blackbird, Defunct, qarrtsiluni, New Zoo Poetry Review, and other journals. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2014. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and daughter, and works as a writer and communications manager for a botanical garden. 

  • Reading Moby Dick Again by Roy Beckemeyer

    1
    “…a way I have of driving off the spleen”

    says Ishmael, and I wonder
    if the writing of it is as much the remedy
    as the decoction of travel, the pen and page
    as much as the Pequod prescription,
    if the narrative, as dense as a cud of bolus,
    is truly the prima medicina for men at sea,
    at least for sailing men of letters
    longing to be shut of the shore,
    carpet bags stuffed with shirts,
    paper, a bottle of India’s finest,
    black, corked, ready.

    2

    “the whale would by all hands
    be considered a noble dish,
    were there not so much of him”

    …and Moby Dick a noble book,perhaps because there is so much
    of it, and all that explanatory
    digression between the true and
    hearty, grab you by the short-hairs
    narration is really needed, because,
    by Ahab, by Queequeg, by God,
    you cannot appreciate the story
    without you understand the job,
    the whaler’s lot in life, his tools,
    his fare, his devotion to his brothers
    on the sea, to the whale, his prey,
    the incarnation of his every need,
    his very nature.

    —

    Watch for Roy Beckemeyer’s new book of ekphrastic poems, Amanuensis Angel, coming soon (March 2018) from Spartan Press, Kansas City, MO.