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  • 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.

     

  • Making AWP Your Own

    It’s time again for the annual AWP conference and dozens if not hundreds of blog posts and articles are popping up everywhere offering advice on how best to network, navigate, or otherwise survive the three-day write-a-palooza.

    And for good reason.

    With 20-30 panels occurring simultaneously at any given moment and hundreds of tables and booths offering all types of free swag and publishing advice during the day and dozens of on-sight and off-sight readings, signings, and parties at night (not to mention hotel room gatherings), AWP is something like a child’s wildest Christmas fantasy, provided that child is a writer who spends most of the rest of the year isolated or with her nose in a book (or grading papers).

    This level of stimulation can overwhelm the new-comer and quiet-at-heart, or trigger a kind of high for the more gregarious, extroverted go-getters among us.

    Which is exactly the nature of AWP. It is both exciting and overwhelming, humbling and empowering, energizing and draining, and many things in between, too, so you might as well make the kinds of choices that are meaningful to you.

    Putting friends first, for example. You know, those people who comprise your literary community, both now and in the future. The ones who hold your hand when you receive a string of rejections and the ones who celebrate your successes, whatever the size, with glee? Friends who help you maintain perspective and are quick to buy you a drink when its lost? They are, after all, the reason you are here at all.

    Or attending panels because their subject matter seems genuinely interesting to you, not just because you want to meet the people facilitating or presenting (unless they are your friend, of course; then attend in a show of support). It’s pretty hard to make a meaningful connection at most panels, anyway. Might as well have some integrity.

    And speaking of integrity, remember to look at a person’s face before checking out their name badge. You can’t truly know how important you may become to one another until you spend time with, and get to know, one another. Choose meaningful connections over superficial.

    AWP is all about over doing it, so go ahead, but remember your career is worthless without your health, so take care of yourself, too.

    • Drink plenty of  water, especially if you are relying on caffeine and alcohol for energy.
    • Stop in for a daily restorative Yoga for Writers session if offered (they often are)..
    • Attend a daily onsite 12-step meeting (everyone is recovering from something).
    • Get outside for fresh air and take a nice walk (while being aware of your surroundings, of course).
    • Find one of the quiet areas often offered where you can gather your thoughts.
    • Fuel yourself with the best food you can manage (pack whole foods, avoid fast foods).
    • Plan a non-conference activity.
    • Wash your hands frequently.

    The best way to avoid the “post-AWP crud,” or any crud at all, is to pay attention to your limits. While it’s true you will be around a lot of germs, it is also true that you are always around a lot of germs. Becoming run-down is what allows them a chance to infiltrate and attack your weakened immune system. Stay strong. Stay healthy.

    Network wisely and sustainably. Don’t take it personally because your connection looks past you when someone more famous shows up nearby. Likewise, don’t break your connection with someone just because someone you think is famous appears behind them.

    And when it comes to meeting famous people, just be cool.

    Also,

    • Be sure to visit small press tables. They need and want your work more than the big guys. Some of them may even become a big press someday, and you will have been with them from the start. All of them are important.
    • Have real conversations. Finding an editor you mesh with, who likes your work and supports you, is invaluable.
    • Stop by booths and tables of the journals who have published you. Tell them thanks!
    • Like all disciplines, the literary world has it’s share of assholes. You don’t have to be one of them.

    AWP is all about fanning ambition, making smart connections, and furthering your career. Don’t leave your heart, mind, or soul behind.

    And Happy Conferencing!

     

  • Having Her Say by K.L. Frank

    This girl,
    burns past me in the Student Union.
    Her passing flash awakens memories
    of days dragging around more heat
    beneath my jeans than my years
    should have stoked. I longed
    to inflame the sky with shibboleths,
    and watch them flash like fireworks.
    This girl,
    who can’t be hauling around
    more than twenty years, wears
    black sweat pants low slung.
    The waistband straddles
    the curve of her hipbone –
    a circus rider performing tricks
    for her audience. ‘PINK’ appliqued in pink
    outlined in pink sequins glitters
    across her butt (the space between ‘I’ and ‘N’
    floats over her coccyx) twitching
    as she walks away.
    This girl’s
    hips affirm louder as they sway
    than the slogans burning my lips.
    No matter the cause, her bumper sticker
    assumes mythic proportions
    against a load-bearing bumper.
    Be she touting a balm against violence,
    a signature hue, a favored singer, or
    support for breast cancer research,
    whatever her say,
    this girl
    has my vote.

    —

    Karin L. Frank is an award-winning author who lives on a farm in the Kansas City area. Her poems and stories have been published in a wide variety of venues both in the U.S.A. and abroad. Her first book of poems, A Meeting of Minds, was released in April, 2012.

  • Praising the Familiar by Brian Fanelli

    We hardly write about each other now,
    comfortable in daily routines. You lean in,
    press your back to me each morning
    as we linger in bed.

    I scroll through my phone,
    share news over coffee.
    I used to karate chop the air
    over headlines I disliked.

    You taught me to uncurl my fists,
    put down the phone, find beauty
    in the familiar, such as the taste of blueberries
    at breakfast, their sweetness like thickened wine,

    or the way the cat dashes
    from window to window,
    trying to paw at birds, or how you leave
    lipstick prints on mugs once done.

    So here is a poem in praise of those routines,
    the warmth of your back pressed to mine,
    the groan of floorboards after you shower,
    the way you pull a chair out and always sit across from me.

    You showed me there is holiness in the everyday,
    the first morning light, the quiet of those hours.

    —

    Brian Fanelli’s poetry collections include Waiting for the Dead to Speak (NYQ Books), winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Poetry Prize, and All That Remains (Unbound Content). His work has been published by The Los Angeles Times, Verse Daily, [PANK], World Literature Today, The Writers Almanac, and other publications. He teaches at Lackawanna College.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • It’s Not Simple, the Heart— by Lois Marie Harrod

    artery-fisted, three-pronged aorta
    with its middle finger twisted up

    yours and better be. Brachiocephaliac
    to the right, left common carotid in the middle,

    and left, the left subclavian: the blood-draggled glove
    of a penniless troll, the knot

    of a neglected vegetable, fennel, celeriac,
    but the heart always left, left behind,

    left below, and common, that too,
    the neck, the head, and left again,

    and yet it keeps on beating, who could guess?
    Drum and drum skin, thick stick, complicit.

    The complicated heart because complexity’s simpler
    than simplicity? Think Bach:

    his great heart with mitral and aortic valves all throbbing,
    oh who loves him more than I, this year

    when no one is performing Brandenburgs in public,
    nothing now but the sound of the recorded heart,

    played to calm an infant, sound’s knotted beauty,
    septum, septum, do you not love the septum,

    the separation, the beat between the beats,
    dirt clot and fairy tubules, clenched face of an infant

    dismissing what fed him, the ventricles, the valves
    the Greeks thought we think with the heart?

    The heart’s a hollow muscle.
    Some days I want to think with mine too.

    —

    Lois Marie Harrod’s 16th collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016. Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis and How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth, in 2013.  Widely published in journals and online, she teaches Creative Writing at TCNJ. Visit her website: www.loismarieharrod.org

  • Mystic Jukebox by Andrés Rodríguez

    I can’t not hear your music
    that’s always blowing rifts,
    choruses, looping rhymes—
    all the self-encoded songs
    which tighten like bands
    around the soul’s small dance.

    You weren’t hatched, you wiggler,
    you demon, you shadow-god
    deaf to all but your own
    machinery of unbroken song.
    You were annealed in the torrent
    of fear’s forgetting everything.

    I used to stare at frozen creeks,
    absorbed by clarities of sleeping
    silt and the dreamless life beneath
    curled into icy crypts. Oh,
    I could kill you, grind you
    under heel, salt you like a slug,
    but I’d melt in the earth as well.

    Then she came and poured
    a new song into my blood,
    and the music listened back,
    bringing clear-headedness,
    a sleeping potion night,
    the crystal personality
    of a new bell ringing my fate.

    This thread of sound leads
    deep into a perfect clearing,
    where a cool pool cures,
    where ear and music kiss.
    No more raging or helpless
    weeping. I dive into myself,
    tunnel and spiral down
    to a place that echoes
    what I most want to hear.

    —

    Andrés Rodríguez is the author of Night Song (Tia Chucha Press) and Book of the Heart(Lindisfarne Press). In 2007 he won Poets & Writers’ Maureen Egan Award for Poetry. His MA in Creative Writing is from Stanford and his PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

  • Earthen Vessels by Ellen Young

    When I take life at a purposeful stride
    things get broken: the cheap
    wine glass or the crystal strikes
    the faucet, a mug loses its handle.
    It wasn’t a mugging, wasn’t
    a loose carpet caused my broken hip.
    Steep trail, view of the sea, a sudden
    acquaintance with a very rude rock.

    Too surprised to be insulted,
    with only one leg to stand on, I was
    dependent on the kindness of strangers,
    aides who came at my call, nurses
    dispensing pills I need not count,
    breakfast served me in bed, therapists
    who said, “Your work is to rest.”
    A novelty, this focus on myself.

    Home again, exercises blend
    with household tasks. A book
    is surprisingly heavy, the big skillet
    a challenge to lift. Adaptations
    must be made. Then one by one
    they are abandoned. Good progress,
    good progress: I go back on a trail,
    regain my purposeful stride.

    Recalling the gifts of care, as I choose
    a mug for tea, I must remind myself
    of pain, ice packs, unsteady feet, cries
    in the corridor, to quell my sense
    of loss in being “whole” again,
    the center of no one’s attention.

    —

    Ellen Roberts Young is a member of the writing community in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She has published two chapbooks with Finishing Line Press, Accidents (2004) and The Map of Longing (2009).  Her first full-length book of poetry is Made and Remade, (WordTech Editions, 2014).  She is co-editor of Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders Journal and blogs intermittently at www.freethoughtandmetaphor.com.