The Zingara Project

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  • Reverend Billy’s Boogie Woogie and Mom’s Gulbransen by Gianna Russo

    The Palladium Theatre, Saint Petersburg, FL.

    We’re here for the Hillbilly Deathmatch.
    Two balladeers duking it out:
    heartbreak vs. boogie woogie
    Les Paul guitar vs. Steinway Baby Grand.
    The Friday Night music palace seeps age and glory–
    rows of faded velvet seats, wooden backs worn smooth
    from decades of sweat and delight.

    The balladeer’s got the guitar: his fingerwork is a cheery stroll,
    his second-tenor-muttered lyrics walking us around the yard,
    down the block to the intersection of Heartbroke and Wanting More.
    We’re referees: our seat-shifting and half-yawns call it:
    no way is that round going to him.

    Then Reverend Billy stomps on stage
    in a cowboy zoot suit and kickass boots.
    He pounces on the ivories, his hands
    the tarantella, the electric slide, the St. Vitus dance of boogie woogie.
    We hoot and jive in our seats.
    It’s a musical K.O.

    God, it feels good to get shaken this way,
    after months of putting the house to sleep,
    forcing a coma on one room at a time.
    Rev says he want to slow it down, play somethin pretty.
    Melodic and melancholy, it takes me
    to my mother’s back room
    where her old upright Gulbransen sags unsold, untuned.
    She filled the house with show tunes and old standards–
    South Pacific, Annie Get Your Gun, her low alto tremolo.
    It’s been mute for years.

    Rev caresses the Steinway.
    Behind him the velvet curtains are crenelated, ballooned.
    Above him the stage lights are blue as my mother’s eyes.

    —

    Gianna Russo is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Moonflower (Kitsune Books), winner of a Florida Book Awards bronze medal, and two chapbooks, including one based on the art work of Vermeer, The Companion of Joy (Green Rabbit Press). Russo is founding editor of YellowJacket Press, (www.yellowjacketpress.org ), Florida’s publisher of poetry chapbook manuscripts. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published poems in Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Apalachee Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, Karamu, The Bloomsbury Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, saw palm, Kestrel, Tampa Review, Water-Stone, The MacGuffin, and Calyx, among others. In 2017, she was named Best of the Bay Local Poet by Creative Loafing. She is assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, where she is editor-in-chief of Sandhill Review and director of the Sandhill Writers Retreat.

  • Home for the Wayward Trans Teenager Leslie Anne Mcilroy

    I would put a sign on my door,
    but the vacancy is already filled.
    So many young people with their “T”
    and almost-hair on their faces.

    I love these boys, these “they.”
    They are bottomless pits —
    pizzas and apple juice,
    dysphoria and binders.

    I only meant to have one,
    but one is connected to the other
    and the other, and it’s not that
    the parents are bad,

    just that it takes a long time
    to turn “she” into “he.” And,
    they change their names,
    call the name you gave them,

    “dead.” You donate the dresses
    to goodwill, throw out the photos
    of ponytails and purses. You say
    “dead,” too, to your daughter.

    It’s only six months and already,
    you are saving up for the double
    mastectomy. You only cry a little
    now, but mostly fold the boys

    underwear, pack away the pearl
    bracelet, correct your family,
    “she to he,” “she to he” and then
    wonder why they can’t just be gay.

    —

    Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize, the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize and the 1997 Chicago Literary Awards. Her second book was published by Word Press in 2008, and third, by Main Street Rag in 2014. Leslie’s poems appear in Grist, Jubilat, The Mississippi Review, PANK, Pearl, Poetry Magazine, the New Ohio Review, The Chiron Review and more.

  • What We Leave Behind by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

    She appeared again today;
    the notch in her left ear
    was the same. Everything
    about her was the same
    except that she was dead,
    hit by a car in the road.
    I remember this deer
    from a month ago when
    she shyly nibbled an apple
    fallen from a struggling tree
    in my yard. So graceful
    an animal, natural
    and unpretentious, moving
    moment to moment.
    I wonder if she dreaded
    a universe that will go on
    without us in the future,
    as it seems we humans do.

    We leave so many marks—
    artifacts, photos, words,
    currency as if to purchase
    a place in history or keep
    our presence alive. We are
    a species attached to forever,
    but even with all our art,
    monuments, memories,
    diaries, sometimes eulogies
    so kindly and profoundly
    offered by those still living,
    the only thing worthwhile
    we could ever leave behind
    is our desire to be immortal,
    a will to survive, but whatever
    that drive is; in the end—deer,
    human—it really doesn’t matter
    as soon as the matter is gone.

    —-

    Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Clockhouse, AJN: The American Journal of Nursing, Mount Hope Magazine, the Jungian journal Depth Insights, Terrain.org, and others journals.  She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and has been an educator, researcher, editor, and is co-founder of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

  • Prairie Poem by Marc Thompson

    And one day I saw my life under the open sky
    and the open sky was orange and the wind
    came up from behind the trees that stood
    like sentinels before the mountains, and
    both trees and mountains were close enough
    to touch even though they were thousands
    of miles away.  It was the prairie grass that
    bent and swirled and bowed before the wind
    without yielding and that day I knew that
    when I was not the wind I would be the grass.

    —

    Marc Thompson lives and writes in Minneapolis MN where he keeps himself busy as the stay-at-home dad of a thirteen-year-old boy, writing poems, and doing volunteer work.  He has an MFA from Hamline University and his poems have appeared around the world in journals and in cyberspace.  He is the author of two chapbooks:  Ordinary Time (Laughing Gull Press) and Oklahoma Heat (Redmoon Press).

  • Directions Back to Childhood by Judith Waller Carroll

    Turn left at the first sign of progress
    and follow the old highway
    along the Stillwater River.
    When you hear the whistle of the train,
    take a right and cross the covered bridge
    that leads to the rodeo grounds
    where the silver-maned bronc
    caused so much havoc the summer you were ten
    and the ghost of your grandfather’s jeep
    rests behind the bleached-out grandstand
    choked with blackberries.
    As you round the corner into town,
    there’s a white picket fence
    laced with lilacs. Walk through the gate.
    You’ll see a blue and white Western Flyer
    lying on its side in the middle of the sidewalk.
    It will take you the rest of the way.

    —

    Judith Waller Carroll is the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award, The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize, and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press).

  • Two Women in a Yurt, After the Quake by James P. Roberts

    For Dr. Jatinda Cheema

    It is eerie, the silence that follows once the ground has finally settled.
    Displaced rocks roll to a stop and the trees slowly subside their almost musical sway.
    Startled birds nervously resume their plaintive song.  It is over now.  We are still here.

    Outside the yurt standing alone on the level plain, Mongush
    Has calmed the skittish horse while young Sadip looks on in aloof disdain,
    Arms folded across his thin chest.  Both are wearing winter garb: Bearskin
    Malgai with ear flaps, a thick nekhii parka, trousers, knee-high boots.

    Beyond, in the distance, snow-covered mountains sprawl beneath a blue sky
    Scattered with puffs of fleecy white clouds which merge with plumes of snow
    Blown off the highest peaks.  The baby girl, Samyan, cries loudly in her wooden crib.

    The yurt is undamaged.  A teardrop-shaped four-string tovshuur hanging
    On a wall peg remains intact.  The inner rim of the yurt roof is decorated
    With bright orange and blue designs, a parade of mandalas circumscribing good fortune.
    A prayer wheel spins around and intricately patterned rugs carpet the floor.

    Two women stand ground in the middle of the yurt.  The younger woman, Namesh, hides
    In the background while her mother, Suunyu, gazes steadily forward, her seamed face hard
    As granite. It is evident there has been a quarrel, still not ended, only delayed
    By the earthquake.  It will resume once the men have departed.

    This is a land of earthquakes: voices of gods.  An old land where mountains loom
    To dizzying heights, then fall steeply to be swallowed in trackless deserts.  Stories
    Told at night in the smoke of burning yak butter candles.  One looks up and feels
    The immensity of stars, blazing like the pitiless eyes of angry deities.

    The women are cautious, rife with knowledge handed down through generations
    Of the fragile relationship of things.  Centuries of secrets form in their eyes and worn faces.
    Beneath the traditional dresses they wear are hard bodies sculpted by wind, sun, and toil.
    Strong, ridged hands create tools, cook day and night, hold crying babies.

    These women even an earthquake cannot destroy, they simply endure.

    —

    James P. Roberts has had four previous collections of poetry published. Recent work can be found in Mirror Dance, Gathering Storm and Bamboo Hut.  He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he hosts a radio poetry show, ‘A Space For Poetry’, and has a passion for women’s flat-track roller derby.

  • Woodworking Lesson by Mike Zimmerman

    Again, I’m with my father in the wood shed:
    My aching wrists hold a rusted bucket of nails
    For him while he cuts two by fours. Soon I’ve shied
    Away, against a wall, as he saws, sands, and kneels
    For leverage. I’m not a very boyish boy. I’d rather
    Be in my room, I think, reading a classic, some Homer
    Perhaps, or sweeping up the kitchen, or helping lather
    Laundry with mom. But he’s picked up the hammer.

    “Hold some nails out for me,” he says, once he’s lined
    The first one up and tapped it. Then, forcefully, precise,
    He brings the hammer up and down until few are flush
    With the wood. “Now it’s your turn.” I feel my soft flesh
    against my thumb. “What if I hit my finger?” His advice
    is action instead: he places the hammer in my small hand.

    —

    Mike Zimmerman is a writer of short stories and poetry, as well as a middle school Writing teacher in East Brooklyn. His previous work has been published in Cutbank, A & U Magazine, and The Painted Bride. He is the 2015 recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award from Gival Press and a finalist for the Hewitt Award in 2016. He finds inspiration and ideas from the people and places he loves. Mike lives in New York City with his husband and their cat.

  • Stray Cat by Jenny McBride

    Victoria park
    where I was running
    the ducks at water’s edge suddenly running too
    and in the empty space of their wake
    a tattered cat.
    I called him on his hunting
    and he meowed, ran after me
    hungry, lonely, being eaten alive by the city
    but I ran to lose him
    not because I don’t love cats
    or didn’t want to rescue his painful life
    but because I was far from home in a conference hotel.
    Was it the same
    with the men I approached
    when I was young and lonely?
    I always took it personally
    but maybe they were just figures rendered useless
    in the scheme of things
    on the day my heart was warming
    and years later
    they paused to scratch out an excuse.
    —

    Jenny McBride’s writing has appeared in Common Ground Review, Rappahannock Review, The California Quarterly, Conclave, Tidal Echoes, Streetwise, and other publications. She makes her home in the rainforest of southeast Alaska.

  • spring is a time of death by J.C. Mari

    spring is a time of death
    that envisions
    comfortable pajamas
    and a very dark room
    in glacier-level ac.
    spring is a time of
    death that still lingers
    stretching, yawning
    not quite knowing
    what to do with itself
    like a Mahler symphony
    still half-way through.
    spring is a time of
    rivers thawed
    mountain passes breached
    and death beating drums
    supreme
    the painful erections of goats.
    Spring
    is a time of death crashing midnight highways
    and haunting the noontime drowned
    spring
    is a time for death
    but not memories, please, hush,

    don’t, don’t ,don’t…

    spring is a time to burn inside the wicker work
    smoke rising
    like a giant conspiracy of ravens flying up.
    —
    J.C. resides in Florida. He engages in a variety of philistine occupations. He has authored the recently published poetry collection ” the sun sets like faces fade right before you pass out.”

  • The Unloved Universe, There and Not by Lois Marie Harrod

    The deaf make so much noise,
    the blind keep appearing,
    those who can’t smell
    reek while the tasteless
    devour the rotten peach.
    Those who can’t touch
    skim their fingers
    along the razor,
    or rubbing up against us
    in the street, refuse
    rebuke. We hurt others,
    ourselves,
    the non-sensed sensing.
    And yet what we can’t touch
    sometimes touches us.                            
    What we can’t under-
    stand often crushes.
    —
    Lois Marie Harrod’s 16th and most recent collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks. And She Took the Heart  (Casa de Cinco Hermanas) appeared in January 2016, Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). Dodge poet and 3-time recipient of a New Jersey Council on the Arts fellowship, she is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3 Links to her online work at www.loismarieharrod.org

  • Where Water Runs by Beth Politsch

    In the place
    where water runs,
    magic shivers and hums
    and shakes the trees
    with its incantations.

    The stream is a cauldron
    of leaves, moss and bark.
    It blooms with dark clouds
    of mud when rust-
    colored stones are lifted
    away from the creek bed
    by the toe of your boot.

    But it is your bare feet
    the water longs to touch.
    It asks
    for your fingers
    to try to interfere
    with its persistent flow.

    If you stay long enough,
    this place becomes a voice
    in your head.
    It whispers
    words you’ve heard
    in dreams. It tells birds
    to swoop down
    the brooky path beside you,
    because you are
    and always have been
    the same.

    And maybe
    if you’re very lucky,
    a toad will pause and look
    you in the eye from a bumpy rock.
    Maybe a crane will sweep down
    into your shade
    and almost anoint you
    with her wings.

    It will wait until you’re ready,
    this oracle,
    chanting spells softly,
    listening for your breath,
    offering vines and roots
    for a staircase,
    as you climb down
    from the usual path.

    —

    Beth Politsch is a storyteller, poet and copywriter based in Lawrence, Kansas. She currently creates content for Hyland Software and writes children’s books and poetry in her free time. 

     

  • Stillness by Martin Willits

    How do we still the stillness,
    making it less than a soft whisper of sleep?
    One more day no one can take problems anymore,
    and look at how badly it turned out
    as the sun sighed, going out
    behind the black-purple night sky background.

    How can we make it any more quiet
    than when the sun is a red flood
    disappearing under the weight of the setting
    and the pushing down of night?

    The large orange harvest moon
    sits on the horizon
    like it was a hard wooden park bench.
    It is so close we can see the pockmarks
    from eons of smashing asteroids,
    and we do not know what to say —

    how do we get more silence, less
    talking, less accidental noises
    than that? Less than an oar
    not moving in water, not dripping
    when lifted, not tipping into the row boat
    as it is tied onto a pier, and not
    the soundlessness of the wooden dock —
    how do we get less noise than that?

    Even the moth flaming after touching fire
    makes a subtle noise. Or the cat, padding
    on a thick rug, clawing and sharpening its nails,
    arching before circling into sleep,
    makes a curious noise, one that troubles
    the quiet. No matter how softly we proceed,
    noise follows us, makes sure we know it’s there.

    —

    Martin Willitts Jr has 20 chapbooks including the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017) plus 11 full-length collections including forthcoming full-lengths includes “The Uncertain Lover” (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and “Home Coming Celebration” (FutureCycle Press, 2018).

     

     

     

     

  • The Road by Carla Schwartz

    The road of asphalt, still covered in winter’s detritus,
    the road of lined up houses that part for a parade,
    the road of school, of church, of aqueduct.

    I travel the road by bicycle, by the side of the road, the shoulder,
    my shoulders, a little hunched,
    my thumbs resting on break hoods.

    The road of large brass sewer covers,
    of small round or square plates for gas, for water,
    where the road dips and rises like a pillow.

    The road of potholes, of layers of asphalt,
    eaten away by salt,
    successive thaws and freezes.

    The road of roadkill — headless rabbits, flattened turtles, snakes,
    sparrows, and turkey plumes spread like a headdress
    in the middle of the road.

    On the road, I listen, keep a watch for glass, for dips.
    On this road, the shoulder narrows, then widens,
    my pace slows down as I ride uphill.

    At an intersection, on the road,
    metal eyeglass frames, squashed and skewed,
    one lens missing, the other shattered.

    —

    Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. Her poems have appeared in many journals. Her second collection of poetry, Intimacy with the Wind, is available from Finishing Line Press or Amazon.com. Find her debut collection, Mother, One More Thing (Turning Point, 2014) on Amazon.com.  Her CB99videos youtube channel has 1,700,000+ views. Learn more at carlapoet.com, or wakewiththesun.blogspot.com or find her @cb99videos.

     

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  • Between Us, the Moon by KB Ballentine

    The moon aches, belly full
    as dawn frays the edge of night.
    In the shallows, a blue heron peers
    into the lake, patient as Saint Francis.
    But a quick slash of beak, and nature
    reveals her unconcern.
    Barely awake, the town unshutters,
    signs turn in shop windows, blinds open.

    And here we lie, in this bed so wide
    we don’t have to touch. I can’t remember
    the last time I knew you,
    when you let me look in your eyes,
    lean on you. What happened to us?
    The heron unfolds its wings and lifts,
    casts a shadow over the shore.
    The moon pales, day empty and raw.

    ~“Between Us, the Moon” first appeared in The Mill, Issue 2.

    KB Ballentine has a M.A. in Writing and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry. Her fifth collection of poems, Almost Everything, Almost Nothing, is forthcoming by Middle Creek Publishing.

  • Looking for a Summer Writing Residency Experience?

    Did you know that Converse College offers two non-degree seeking options for creative writers wishing to hone their skills?

    If you are looking for an immersive experience and want a taste of what a writing residency is all about, Converse now offers the Brief Immersion Residency.

    Immersion students join MFA students and MFA core faculty in the residency workshop as a non-degree, non-credit student. Work is discussed meaningfully and at length with all participants providing critique and feedback. Participants also attend craft lecture offerings and other classroom activities as well as faculty and visiting faculty readings.

    Converse also offers a Lecture Pass allowing the holder to attend some or all craft lectures held during the residency session and is available to any writer holding a bachelor’s degree, or to any college student entering or currently enrolled as a senior. Lecture passes are also available to Converse alumni. Both full and half passes are available for a small fee. Lecture pass attendees receive no academic credit and they do not attend any writing workshop, only craft lectures with the half pass, or craft lectures and readings with a full pass.

    Converse’s current and past core faculty include such notable and award winning writers as Denise Duhamel, Richard Tilinghast, Yona Harvey, Marlin Barton, Tommy Hays, C. Michael Curtis, Rick Mulkey, Robert Olmstead, Leslie Pietrzyk, Susan Teculve, Suzanne Cleary, Gary Jackson, Randall Kenan, Juan Morales, Tessa Fontain, Megan Hansen Shepherd, and Allan Wolf, just to name a handful (this list is FAR from exhaustive).

    Converse is accepting applications NOW for this year’s Summer Residency scheduled for May 31 to June 8th at their Spartanburg, South Carolina campus. Apply here.

    DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS MAY 10TH FOR READERS OF ZINGARA POETRY REVIEW. Just say you learned about the opportunity here.

    So what are you waiting for – apply today!