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  • Overheard by Carolyn Martin

    As evening sneaks around
    the house,
    the ironing board and
    kitchen sink gossip about
    your first kiss.
    Inexplicable –
    how they understand
    the weight of soft,
    the intimacy
    of wind-brushed clouds; how,
    in this chartreuse spring,
    you’ll leave behind
    your baseball glove for moony moods
    and un-chewed fingernails; how
    you’ll charge
    summer’s quickenings
    with shattered
    beliefs of black and white.
    Tonight, as the board folds itself
    and the last dish is washed,
    the owl clock hushes
    their surmise.
    If you had overheard, you
    would have entertained
    their slivered truths,
    perhaps cheered their prophecy.

    —

    From English teacher to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and perfect summers. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK including “Stirring,” “CALYX,” “Persimmon Tree,” “How Higher Education Feels,” and “Antiphon.” Her third collection, Thin Places, was released by Kelsay Books in Summer 2017. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penciled “extremely maudlin,” Carolyn is ​still ​amazed she has continued to write.

     

     

  • Three Pleasures by Lola Haskins

    Coffee

    The day you learned to love bitterness,
    you were sure you were grown.

    *

    Flowers

    Older, you set flowers in clear water as if
    with enough kindness, they would not fade.

    *

    Desire

    The din of thousands of wanting cranes
    informs your winter steps. You count

    on them like husbands, every dawn.
    Then one morning, they are gone.

    —

    Lola Haskins’ most recent poetry collection is How Small, Confronting Morning (Jacar, 2016). Her prose work includes an advice book and a book about Florida cemeteries. Among her honors are the Iowa Poetry Prize and two Florida Book Awards. She serves as Honorary Chancellor of the Florida State Poet’s Association.

  • Do Not by Barbara Lawhorn

    Don’t fall in love ever again.
    Maybe, don’t trust yourself.
    Maybe only believe in what is
    tangible. Don’t use similes
    and metaphors so much in speech. Don’t

    let others know what you are thinking. Feeling.
    Doing next. Don’t plan ahead. Don’t plan meals.
    Don’t think. Don’t think the wind rustling the dead
    leaves, still hanging on, is God. Don’t

    expect. Anything. Don’t expect anyone.
    Anyone to make room for you in the homes
    of their lives. Or you for them. Get small. Get quiet.
    Work on disappearing into yourself. Think.
    Think bomb shelter, canned goods, flashlights, and sleeping
    bags. Zip yourself up. Listen. Listen. To the water rising
    in you; all that blood. Be a dead leaf casting away, first on air
    then on water. Use as few words as possible. As necessary.
    You aren’t a tree. Words aren’t branches. Words are icicles.
    Only hang them coldly, where they are really needed. Don’t

    press your body to anything or anyone. Let your body only
    be lodging wherever and whenever you are in the world. Don’t
    talk. Don’t send a telegram to the world; send one to yourself.
    Don’t smile unnecessarily. Set your face. Your skin isn’t Silly
    Putty. Much of the world is unfunny. Don’t

    laugh. What foolishness
    you swam in. How dare you? You wore optimism like a bikini
    that didn’t fit you. Take it off. No one will look at you,
    much less touch you, in your nakedness.

    —

    Barbara Lawhorn is an Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University. She’s into literacy activism, walking her dog, Banjo, running, baking and eating bread, and finding the wild places, within and outside. Her most recent work can be found at The Longleaf Pine, BLYNKT, Nebo: A Literary Magazine, and Naugatuck River Review. Her favorite creative endeavors are her kids, Annaleigh and Jack.

  • Schoolhouse Rock by Alex Stolis

    Three is a Magic Number

    The moon is full. Strike that. The moon is. Strike that.
    There is no moon. There is a motorcade. Motorcycle
    cop in full regalia, an American flag flies stiff in back.
    The hearse is black, the black of silence; the kind that
    crowds out light. Squeeze my hand want to know you
    are still there. I’m having a premonition. Count the cars
    with me: twothreefour, a hawk circles. The moon’s over
    head after all, perched on a branch ready to fly.

    The Shot Heard Round the World

    The jukebox whirs and murmurs to a stop. Lipstick
    law takes over after 2AM. Every cliché ever heard
    gets lined up, ice-watered down, poured into a cup
    along with sawdust and pool chalk. Go ahead suck
    the lime. Lick the salt. Choke on it down. All bets
    are off since the clean slate called it a night. This is
    the land of a-plenty, land of absolute memories.
    Last call is a random, desperate kiss.

    Elementary, My Dear

    The walls are suffocating, shedding their skin.
    We’re not born for permanence. Adam made
    the decision for us. We are destined to die of
    exposure in the presence of love. Beauty: the
    bite of an apple, a flash of white skin, one last
    breath on a pane of glass. Sin: a constituency
    of stars, a cabal of angels shuffling over a pin
    head; a brand new coat of paint.
    —

    Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Recent chapbooks include Justice for all, published by Conversation Paperpress (UK) based on the last words of Texas Death Row inmates. Also, Without Dorothy, There is No Going Home from ELJ Publications. Other releases include an e-chapbook, From an iPod found in Canal Park; Duluth, MN, from Right Hand Pointing and John Berryman is Dead from White Sky e-books. His full length collection, Postcards from the Knife Thrower, was a runner up for the Moon City Poetry Award. His chapbook, Perspectives on a Crime Scene and a full length photo/poetry collection, Pop. 1280 are forthcoming from Grey Borders books.

  • Rehearsal Hall by Diana Rosen

    She loves hanging out in Wattles Park gazing
    at the lush community garden tilled by urban dwellers
    eager for the primitive feel of dark, moist earth. It’s an anomaly,
    this patch of tilled land among the apartments with character
    and never enough parking of contemporary Hollywood. She
    comes to play her pear wood recorder, mouthpiece worn smooth
    as velvet, sharp edges of note holes melting into her fingers
    as the motets and minuets dance among tomatoes, bok choy,
    mustard greens. She sits among ruins of an edifice with a half column
    there, stone bench here, rain-washed cement floor of barely visible
    hand-painted fleur-de-lis. Stars of the movies, decked out in tuxedoes
    and satin gowns would arrive here in long black limousines,
    like a shiny line of ants, to take their places under the moon applauding
    for performances without the ever present camera. She imagines
    Isadora Duncan dancing across the stage, her signature white silk scarf
    floating behind her or Paderewski, playing sending thunderous notes
    on the ivory keys, soaring up the heavens. Her own music seems so small
    against the memory of these great talents but she continues for the pure
    pleasure it brings her, laughs when the cornstalks undulate as if to say,
    Encore! Dusk falls as she packs up, walks down the sloping dirt path,
    stopping every few trees to crush pine needles in her hands for the burst
    of scent. She detours to re-visit ancient yellow roses struggling to stay
    alive, peers into the dilapidated teahouse where a once-vivid scroll hangs,
    its faded calligraphy a glimpse of disciplined beauty. A rusted brazier
    awaits honored guests. At the bottom the hill, she turns to gaze up,
    wonders what Duncan and Paderewski thought about entertaining the elite
    of the silver screen on summer nights redolent with rose and pine.

    —

    Diana Rosen’s flash fiction and poetry have been published in anthologies and journals including, among others, Kiss Me Goodnight, Altadena Poetry Review, Rattle, Tiferet Journal, Silver Birch Press, Ariel Chart, and Poetic Diversity. She has published thirteen non-fiction books. and teaches free-write classes at senior citizen centers.

     

     

     

  • Alternate Life Number Two by Jeanne DeLarm-Neri

    In which girls whose poplin skirts
    stand straight out on stiff crinolines
    point my path up Haystack Mountain
    where I will taste a boy’s tongue.

    Before giving up my name, I scan
    orange leaf trees below, for an outcast
    with my hair. She lurks under that canopy
    where sun fights to ray itself in.

    I mask my face in a journey from hamlet
    to outskirts of cities and their gates.
    Stay in the trees, clad as I am
    in patches of gleaned leather.

    In which I sell or give away belongings:
    wax flowers fit for bisque doll hands.
    Push that box off my shoulder,
    wake up atop a bed of pine needles.

    I am not dead, but playing possum,
    white skin a camouflage for meat
    of mushrooms, rocks that glow in the gloam.
    In which a lean-to serves as my home.

    —

    Jeanne DeLarm-Neri writes from a house built by a ship captain in 1853 in a Connecticut shore town, which she shares with her husband and antique dolls.   Her poems have been published in various journals, one being nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She received an MFA from Fairfield University.

  • Late Freeze, An Interlocking Rubiyat, by Roy Beckemeyer

    Spring rose from sleep too soon, I fear,
    lifted her head into cold, clear
    starlight. Blinked, shuddered, then reaped
    the pain of her mistake. The year

    will always bear the mark, carved deep
    in lore: this spring that frost killed, creeped
    into the buds with ice. Life left
    the trees as if they had been steeped

    in poison. Without fruit, bereft,
    the birds ceased song. Their hearts were cleft.
    Season’s shift should be smooth and deft,
    Instead, we’ve suffered winter’s theft.

    —

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

  • Look by Stephen Mead

    Something got lost, a line,
    a thought he heard in another’s eyes.
    That was almost a visible phrase.
    It mumbled of love.
    A stranger came close.
    A different light shone down.

    Now he is coming home.
    Is this the man you expected?
    His face is a rock.
    Each orifice weeps blood.
    Does the suffering numb?

    A virus was transmitted.
    The doctors told him that.
    Injections were a regular treat.
    Specialists gave tests.

    But there was another
    more important thing he needed.
    It’s only you who can give it.
    Acceptance is reckoning
    for those who die
    with why on their lips.

    Tonight you are the one
    wearing that question.
    You gaze at a boy slumbering,
    at oxygen mask veils.

    Thinness gets thinner.
    Here touch could change the world
    revoke rejection.

    Look. He is flesh of your flesh.
    It is essential that death should not
    take him alone.

    (The beginning of the AIDS pandemic in the United States was not so long ago)

    Read Stephen’s poem “Fugitives” previously published as a Zingara Poetry Pick in 2016

    —

    A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published Outsider artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads.  In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place:  Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead

     

     

  • Dance in a Drugstore by Anne Whitehouse

    The dark-eyed salesgirl at CVS
    jumped into the toy collection box,
    bobbing like a jack-in-the-box,
    tossing her long, dark, silky hair.

    She jumped out laughing,
    flirting with the salesboy,
    inviting him to dance
    to the background Muzak.

    Under the store’s fluorescent glare,
    they swayed and twirled,
    overcoming the boredom
    of a slow Sunday night
    in a dead-end job,
    in step with an old love song.

    —

    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

     

  • Seventeen by Adrian S. Potter

    Those were better days for everybody
    we knew. Electric guitars groaned

     their inherent blues, spilling secrets
    we’ve since forgotten. Rain arrived

     in spring and lingered around longer
    than desired. Even the stars had a job,

    to remind us how nothing dies as slow
    as the light of our youth. I confess:

     I never understood what the guitars
    were saying, the reasons why logic

     felt flawed, the purpose of our mistakes.
    Regrets piled up like trash in the streets.

    I let down defenses, ignored the obvious
    truths, spent late nights seeking trouble

    in the wrong places, just like everyone else.
    We weren’t broken, yet; that was the riddle

    we needed to solve. Hearts open, parched
    throats begging for booze we couldn’t buy

    while adults sneered at our defiant spirits,
    secretly wishing they still possessed them.

     —

    Adrian S. Potter writes poetry and short fiction. He is the author of the fiction chapbook Survival Notes (Červená Barva Press, 2008) and winner of the 2010 Southern Illinois Writers Guild Poetry Contest. Some publication credits include North American Review, Obsidian and Kansas City Voices. He blogs, sometimes, at http://adrianspotter.com/.

     

  • When Freedom Fails Me by Lisa Masé

    Because I have died and been reborn,
    because rarely, I get to glimpse the calm
    that precedes worry,
    I take the beauty way home today.

    Once, I trusted some safety beyond myself
    as my ear pressed against your broad chest
    to hear another steady beat.

    I am left with my own heart
    leaning into a sunflower
    that beams yellow
    from its head of diamond nectar.

    When did it ever go easily?

    Maybe as a baby,
    before my spirit remembered fear
    and started clutching at time’s skirts
    as they swirled
    to let thoughts wrap me
    in their brocade of desires.
    —

    Lisa Masé has been writing poetry since childhood. She teaches poetry workshops for Vermont’s Poem City events, co-facilitates a writing group, and has translated the poetry of writers from Italy, France, and the Dominican Republic. Her chap book, Heart Breaks Open, was published by the Sacred Poetry Contest.

  • Water Road by Margaret Fieland

    The price of my soul is a river of flowers,
    a sack full of diamonds, the remnants of dreams

    The grass has turned yellow, the trees dry and broken
    My garden is pierced by wild music of screams

    My shirt’s torn and dirty, my pants patched and worn,
    I’m covered in fear and the smell of defeat

    When lies are exposed and the truth never spoken,
    the rain tumbles down and flows over my feet

    The sunshine explodes, the moonbeam gleams narrow
    I start on a journey which never will end

    I don yellow boots and a quiver of arrows
    to pound down a roadway that winds round a bend

    There is no armor strong enough to protect me
    or tackle the demons that spring up from the grass

    A pound of potatoes, a bushel of peppers,
    are blackened and rotting as I stumble past

    —

    Born and raised in New York City, Margaret Fieland has been around art and music all her life.  Her poems and stories have appeared in journals such as  Turbulence Magazine, Front Range Review, and All Rights Reserved.  She is the author of  Relocated, Geek Games,  Broken Bonds, and Rob’s Rebellion published by MuseItUp Publishing, and of Sand in the Desert, a collection of science fiction persona poems. A chapter book is due out later this year.

  • Mirror Image by Dilantha Gunawardana

    You look at the glow of the super moon,
    At a flawless circle, epitomizing perfection.

    So was by legend, Cleopatra, and by myth, Helen of Troy.
    We all like to see some beauty in us, outer or inner,

    Like that feeling which sponsors effervescent mirth,
    From a one-way transaction with a roadside beggar,

    Mirrors are ubiquitous; in the bedroom, above the sink,
    On the outside of a car, some hand-held, some hung in the soul.

    All are badgering truth machines, inescapable, almost
    Like the nagging sun during the daylight hours,

    And mirror images are far from idyllic sculptures,
    Only an offering of honesty, of a fine glass-like reality,

    A reflection that you look at, either directly or with tilting pupils,
    In a myriad of deft angles, gazing at a familiar creature,

    Who fails to meet up to your high expectations.
    Still, you graft a tongue-full of flattery,

    Harvesting an eyeful of dishonesty from a mirror’s face,
    Oblivious that deception is like a daffodil,

    A blooming Narcissus.

    Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the ripe age of 32 and now has more than 1700 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry and Ravens Perch, among others. He blogs at – https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/

  • National Poetry Month Call for Submissions

    Zingara Poetry Review is celebrating National Poetry Month this April by publishing a poem every day of the month and wants YOUR submissions.

    • Send 1-3 previously unpublished poems 40 lines of fewer in the body of an email, any style, any subject, to ZingaraPoet@gmail.com with National Poetry Month as the subject of your email.
    • Include a cover letter and brief professional biography of 50 words or fewer, also in the body of your email.
    • Submissions will be accepted through April 30th, unless otherwise announced.
    • Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let me know immediately if submitted work is accepted elsewhere.
    • Published poets receive bragging rights and the chance to share their work with a diverse and ever-growing audience.
    • Submissions which do not follow these guidelines will be disregarded.
    • If accepted work is later published elsewhere, please acknowledge that the piece first appeared in Zingara Poetry Review.
    • There are no fees to submit. All submitters will be subscribed to the Zingara Poetry Review monthly newsletter and digest.
    • Check Zingara Poetry Review every day in April to read great poems and celebrate National Poetry Month.
    • Send me your twitter handle and follow Zingara Poetry Review @ZingaraPoet and I will tag you the day your poem is published.

    I look forward to reading your submissions. Happy National Poetry Month!

  • Meeting My Old Boyfriend after Thirty Years by Dianne Silvestri

    He phoned asking to meet for lunch,
    after long silence since I shoved
    his frat pin back the year after
    we left for college. He’d looked me up.

    In high school already he knew what he wanted
    and made me do it, those years before
    I knew I could refuse. Now I preempted
    his predictable persuasive monologue.

    I wore a confident shirt and make-up,
    took along photos of my husband and children
    to show and tell my escape.
    He was easy to spy, but the smart team captain’s

    eyes now seemed crocodile green,
    his smile toothy, Roman nose too thin.
    His build was fuller, self-assurance unchanged.
    I gave a firm handshake, ordered chicken salad.

    After comparing updates on family
    and careers—he married, no children—
    talk brought his news of others from our class,
    one dead already.

    I politely gathered up the end,
    accepted his card and spotted the note
    penned on the corner, “if there’s any interest,”
    dropped it into my bag.

    —

    Dianne Silvestri, author of the chapbook Necessary Sentiments, has had poems appear in The Main Street Rag, Earth’s Daughters, The Comstock Review, Evening Street Review, The Worcester Review, Pulse, The Healing Muse, and elsewhere. A Pushcart nominee, she is Copy-Editor of the journal Dermatitis and leads the Morse Poetry Group.