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  • A Date with Doubt by James Croal Jackson

    You look around the room
    and rate singles from one to ten
    in terms of melancholy
    but don’t know
    how to rate yourself–
    Pacific waves flow through
    you almost drown
    in the sea of your thoughts–
    the scisms between pen and mirror,
    heart and mind, these are thieves
    who will lie to you ‘til the Greyhound
    leaves for Cincinnati at 11:30.
    Until then we watch superheroes do bad
    stand-up comedy in the conference room
    at the new Mikey’s, eating mushroom pizza
    with too-hot sauce. Bass pounds from the stage
    so loudly we walk to 16-Bit next door
    to drink water and pretend we are drunk,
    our mouths rocketships exploring the universe
    of each other– the rotation of stars
    confused with physics. In the end all you want
    is chocolate cake. Your blue eyes curve away
    in that soaring flyball-to-left way. The way
    you sway me back to simpler times
    when buying CDs was a holy act
    of personal preference
    and I stayed sealed on a shelf in plastic,
    waiting to give the world my music.

    —

    James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in FLAPPERHOUSE, Rust + Moth, The Bitter Oleander, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle and is a former winner of the William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest. Find him in Columbus, Ohio or at jimjakk.com.

  • If Yellow Sang To Me by Linda Imbler

    If yellow sang to me of bright sun’s day,
    the consonance of corn on the cob served at picnics
    sweet cream butter at the side

    If yellow sang to me as I watch the march
    of lemony taxicabs
    transporting frazzled strangers
    from airports to who knows where

    The rhythm of bouncing saffron school buses conveying our future

    A vase of sunflowers painted on canvas, the romantic interpretation
    through beautiful hands belonging to Van Gogh,
    harvest gold portrayed

    Stunning yellow tang, the maestro, swimming amid corals in clear water

    A cadence of newly sharpened pencils united with
    cobalt legal pads

    The aria of a canary’s song

    A polyphony-
    Bananas to be peeled and sliced
    placed atop cereal

    If yellow sang to me.

    —

    Linda Imbler is the author of the published poetry collection “Big Questions, Little Sleep.” Twenty-one of her poems have been published by various magazines and journals. Another poem is forthcoming in Leaves of Ink. Online, she can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com. She lives in Wichita, Kansas.

    Read last week’s poem: “Somewhere Near Odessa, 1900” by Joanne Townsend

  • When Writing Feels Unreachable: Ten Easy Writing Activities

    Because when you get busy, you get better:

    • Take a walk, a swim, a bike ride, or otherwise stimulate your endorphins. Endorphins make you feel good!
    • Read something unfamiliar to create new neural pathways in your brain.
    • Get to know your work, and voice, by rereading favorite works by you — objectively. Take notes.
    • Paint a picture. Plenty of studies support that learning to paint improves writing.
    • Make a list. Doesn’t matter what kind, it will engage, and quiet, your inner editor.
    • Iron clothes, mindfully. It helps with focus (and you’ll look extra sharp for that next dress-well affair). Alternately, do a jigsaw puzzle.
    • Talk with a writer or artist friend. They know what you’re going through.
    • Get negative. Imagine all possible negative outcomes of your not writing, now or forever. See, things aren’t that bad!
    • Watch a favorite movie and take notes on plot, characterization, dialog, setting, etc.
    • Listen to a favorite podcast, preferably one involving writers (think interviews, readings, craft discussions). One of my favorites is On Being. Krista Tippet frequently interviews poets and writers.

    WRITE ON!

    Like writing prompts? Check out Fast Friday Poetry Prompts

  • When You’re Feeling Casual on a Saturday it Must be #Caturday

    Keeping it Casual, or should I say, catual?

    The calendar reveals a falling away of days, as does the light that changes with the earth’s slight tilt and the urgency with which cicadas call to one another.

    The new semester begins soon.

    Indolence is becoming sparse, time for staring out windows at a premium. Already my dreams are peppered with classroom scenarios and visions of students misunderstanding the purpose of peer review. The books in my bags and on my bedside table have transformed from fiction & poetry, a graphic novel or two, to texts and opinions on pedagogy.

    These next two weeks will slip through my fingers as if I were grasping water.

    I cannot keep time from fleeing, but today I will embrace the casual.

    Casual as in relaxed and unconcerned, as in not regular or permanent. As in irregular.

    Casual as in eating out of the refrigerator, watching old movies with bad reviews, sitting on the broken lawn chair on the front porch even though the weather is hot and humid, wearing pjs for most of the day.

    I mean ˈkaZHo͞oəl/, as in  acting without sufficient care or thoroughness, puttering around the house, starting projects and not finishing them. Mooching.

    And maybe later it will mean a happenstance discovery of a good deal at the local record store (it is vinyl Saturday, after all) and grabbing a iced something from a local someplace.

    Just as long as it is informal,
         without style,
              almost accidental.

    Like writing prompts? Try one of these: Fast Friday Poetry Prompts

  • Somewhere Near Odessa, 1900 by Joanne Townsend

    In the low light by the river
    my grandparents, so young,
    stand in shabby coats and worn shoes.
    The bridge casts violet shadows on their fear,
    on the pine trees and frigid cold,
    the black rage of Russia
    an underlying hiss.
    He knows he will leave,
    the spoken goodbyes harder than hunger,
    the thirst deep in him.
    He will work and save,
    send for her and the children.
    He sees her tears and turns away,
    his restless mind already in flight,
    his feet tapping, tracks
    that will fade to memory.

    On the way to America,
    those cold damp nights on the Rotterdam,
    he hears the fading colors of their voices,
    diminishing wave lengths, the tossing ship
    and the shock of the lonely dark.

    —

    Joanne Townsend lived in Anchorage, Alaska from 1970 to 1995, and it was her honor to serve as Alaska State Poet Laureate officially from 1988-1992 and unofficially at the request of the Alaska State Council for two more years until the appointment of Tom Sexton. In December 2005 she moved to Las Cruces, NM which is now home. Her 24 poem collection Following the Trails appeared as an internal chapbook in Minotaur 55

    (Minotaur Press 2009) She is currently working with 2 co-editors in judging poetry for Sin Fronteras: Writers without Borders 2018.

    Also enjoy  Joanne’s poem, “Summer Solstice”

  • Yellow Jackets and the Demons of Indecision

    By the time this post appears, it will have been a week since the exterminator came and took care of the yellow jacket problem in my back yard.

    I didn’t know the exterminator had even arrived until my husband called me around mid-morning to say he’d received an invoice for the exterminator’s services via email. My husband was in San Diego at the time, attending the Comic Con.

    I was surprised because the appointment had been scheduled for 2:00 PM., and  because it was raining cats and dogs when I’d left the house at around 8:20 AM. I was attending a conference in town.

    Of course, it makes much more sense to extract a wasp’s nest first thing in the morning. That’s when the nest is most occupied by wasps.

    I just hadn’t thought of it.

    Still, I was in doubt. I couldn’t  fathom that the heavy rain and wet conditions wouldn’t interfere with the extermination. Honestly, I half-expected the phone call was to cancel.

    But my husband confirmed that, yes, according to the exterminator, the wasps had in fact been “augmented” from the yard. It was a sizable nest, my husband quoted the exterminator as saying, probably 500 wasps or more. There is a chance that a few are still buzzing around looking for their home, but they won’t last long without their nest,” my husband continued.

    Something about this last observation made me feel cold-hearted.

    I’m not confessing a secret love for yellow jackets here, or anything like that, but I have to admit to experiencing some residual feelings of guilt over creating a situation that caused the death of hundreds of innocent creatures. Those yellow jackets were, after all, only behaving as yellow jackets do: making and protecting their home, creating more yellow jackets, and generally building an existence.

    It just so happened that their existence was interfering greatly with ours.

    Specifically, they made it impossible to mow the yard, first by attacking my husband when tried mowing the back yard before we left town, then attacking a friend, who tried to mow just the front yard while we were gone.

    They simply had to go.

    Still, I couldn’t help imagining those few surviving wasps, stunned and confused, hovering around the hole in the ground that was once their nest. Couldn’t help but sense their groundlessness.

    Such are the thoughts of a writer.

    But then I realized that, since the extermination had been taken care of, my afternoon was free.I felt cheered, then, and shifted my thoughts to how to spend the rest of my day.

    And this, dear reader, is precisely the moment that the demons of indecision appeared.

    A virtual drop-down list of options, including everything from doing homework for the conference to editing my manuscript, finishing a quilt I’ve been sewing to taking a nap with the cat, to going to the gym or staying on campus to work on my syllabus, all popped into my mind.

    Good options, all. But together, potentially overwhelming.

    Especially since I am apt to paralyze myself with indecision in these moments.  I mean, just making the decision to eat out, for example, can evolve into a mental debate of what and where to eat.

    Choosing to write opens an even wider array of menu options: should I write poetry or prose, something formal or informal, personal, creative or academic?  Should I write something new or revise something old? Should I catch up my correspondence by sending cards or composing emails?

    Really, the list is endless.

    The point is, I tend to put too much pressure on myself when it comes to decisions. I feel I must make the absolute best decision and fear that making the “wrong” decision will result in drastic, long-lasting consequences which I neither wanted nor intended.

    Even though this has never happened.

    Still, it is true that no matter what I choose to do, I am choosing NOT to do a whole host of other things. If I write, I am not exercising. If I do homework, I am not working on my poetry manuscript. If I work on my blog at Starbucks, I am not working on my quilt at home.

    And of course, making no decision at all is a decision in itself.

    So it is that with every choice I make, I feel a little bit of grief and a smidgen of sorrow. Like those stunned wasps unhoused by the exterminator, my unchosen options hang around searching for a home – a place into which to burrow and build an existence.

    But such are the thoughts of a writer.

  • August Invitation by Adrian Slonaker

    Dance with me in that fountain with all the stone egrets,
    but curse when your toes touch the chill of the ripples.
    Recall the twilight bliss of Ghost in the Graveyard.
    Scratch my chin in the glare of the warehouse window.
    Press my hand under the Perseids,
    Share an avocado milkshake with me,
    and let’s endeavor to remember
    that legend about sloths
    and owls.

    Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with interests that include vegetarian cooking, wrestling, and 1960s pop music. Adrian’s poetry has appeared in Better Than Starbucks, CC&D, Amaryllis, Dodging the Rain and Three Line Poetry.  

    Enjoy more poem at Zingara Poetry Picks

  • Summer Writing and Revision is Easy

    This summer, I have been availing myself of the use of the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library’s study rooms to focus on several writing projects.

    This is the first summer that the library has offered reserved study rooms to faculty, and it all came about in response to popular demand and the advocacy of the Faculty Writer’s Retreat facilitator, Lynn Cherry.

    The retreat itself, held during most school breaks, is quite a boon and one that I participate in every chance I get, which has been four times thus far. Unlike a writing conference, which usually involves craft lectures, panels, readings, seminars, and, perhaps, workshops, the College of Charleston’s Faculty Writers Retreat simply provides a distraction-free study room, daily lunches, afternoon snacks, and a sense of accountability. Faculty can apply for a 2, 3, or 5-day stint and available spots fill quickly. Participants agree that they will not use the time to prep for classes, grade or browse social media. Most everyone finds they get a lot done during their selected time period, and even when there are struggles or blocks, most faculty are glad to have had the time to deal with those, too, as it actually helps them  move forward.

    Though I come away from the Faculty Writer’s Retreat with a different kind of same kind of high that a conference might generate, I always come away feeling productive, and centered and with plenty of evidence of my hard work. The difference is subtle but important.

    This year, after a number of participants expressed just how useful it was having access to a study room, myself included, the retreat facilitator inquired into the matter on our behalf. Thanks to her initiative the good folks at Addlestone agreed to set aside three rooms for faculty to reserve for up to three days at a time during any given week this summer, up until the week that classes begin.

    And I have been in one of them every week that I’ve been in town.

    The first several weeks of the summer I worked almost entirely on the New Mexico Poem anthology, since that was my focus during the retreat in May, and more or less wallowed in rereading every contribution and reconsidering the organization and title of the sections. What I found interesting about the process was how I paired some of the same poems together in the revision as I had paired in the first collection, which I discovered after reviewing both manuscripts. In other instances, and maybe because of the new section titles and focus, poems wound up in very different locations.

    I’m sure I’ve spent over 100 hours reconsidering the collection in detail, not including the breaks I took to remain as fresh and as objective as possible. It’s no lie that being hungry, angry, lonely, or tired will drastically affect one’s judgment, so I made sure not to deliberate while experiencing any of those states.

    I sent the manuscript off to my co-editor in mid-June, right before taking off for Kansas City to visit family.  As is usually the case, I found it very difficult to shift my mental state from contemplating poetry to focusing on family for those few days but finally let go and shifted my focus to the present moment and to enjoying my time away from Charleston. Now that I have returned home, the opposite is more true and I struggle to ease myself back into a life groove.

    To help with my re-entry, and in the spirit of easy does it, I “suited up and showed up” to my reserved study room on Wednesday, after three weeks away, determined to work on something. I set no specific goal or objective – just brought with me a hard copy of my own manuscript and my computer. After getting settled in, I was able to revise a few poems, rearrange my MS into sections, and, eventually, assemble and submit a six-page manuscript for a literary magazine In which I would very much like to have my poems appear. I think the day was more productive than it would have been had I fallen into either of the two habits that are most common to me: 1) overwhelm myself with a list of a dozen possible projects on which I might focus, or 2) frustrate myself with an improbable goal. It is much better, I am learning, to have an open mind as I approach one small project at a time.

    I did wind up canceling my Thursday study room reservation, however,  to meet with an exterminator regarding the Yellow Jackets that have taken residence in my yard, most likely as a result of our neglecting yard work those seven months we were living in an apartment while repairs were being made to the house after Hurricane Matthew. (Yes, I can find a way to drop that bit of info into most conversations.) Yellow Jackets, I decided, are just a little more pressing than having a study room for the afternoon.

    The week ahead is a busy one. I am to attend a Writing Across the Curriculum conference and have about a half-dozen appointments to see to. I was tempted to cancel my study room reservations for the week, seeing how I will only get a few hours here and there to utilize the space, but decided against it, for when things are especially busy it is especially important to hold space open for my writing. I may not get as much time as I would prefer, but any time I do capture will go under the column for successes this week.

     

     

  • Years Later You Walk In by Maryfrances Wagner

    Tangled under a blanket
    we could melt curbed snow,
    smoke up windows,

    desire unable to hold.
    Boiling water, morning
    after, sudden laughter.

    You walk into my dream:
    older man, panzer tan,
    builder hands.

    How could I have imagined
    you would turn: spoiled meat,
    October leaf, yellow teeth.

    Maryfrances Wagner’s books include Salvatore’s Daughter, Light Subtracts Itself, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award for Literary Excellence), Dioramas (Mammoth) and Pouf (FLP). Poems have appeared in New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, Voices in Italian Americana, Unsettling America:  An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin Books), Literature Across Cultures (Pearson/Longman), Bearing Witness, The Dream Book, An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation), et.al.  She co-edits I-70 Review.

    To find out more, enjoy this previous interview with Maryfrances:

    Zingara Interview Maryfrances Wagner

    Enjoy more poems at Zingara Poetry Picks

  • Renting a Room on Magazine Street by Jim Zola

    The obvious is difficult to prove
    in a room with ceilings high enough
    for giants to unstoop, where glass doors
    introduce a garden plot of chickweed
    and empty pots. Upstairs a piano
    plays all day, plinking made-up melodies
    like a drunk weaving patterns
    in a Sunday parking lot. Sometimes
    the songs are funereal, marching

    the dead on bright white keys. I never
    see the player, never slip past
    in narrow veins of hallways. He works
    nights, sleeps days on the hardwood floor
    above my head. It’s the nights that take
    their toll, the tireless jangle
    of window fans, babies crying
    as if they know their mothers moan
    in the deep sleep some lover’s arms.

    Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for Deaf children, as a toy designer for Fisher Price, and currently as a children’s librarian. Published in many journals through the years, his publications include a chapbook — The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) — and a full length poetry collection — What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He currently lives in Greensboro, NC

    Enjoy more poems at Zingara Poetry Picks

  • Affirmative Through Toledo by Paul Grams

    Say me that only word
    the one counts one and two
    in the sweet book of love
    that Ima write wit you

    saying how this really could
    be time to say it best
    now that the moon be nerve
    air chill and lay it rest

    Whisper me like tires
    reading the pale gray road
    sufficient love for this next
    kiss
    word up kids ax you bogue
    lets light one closer fire
    between the stars      say yes
    this
    —
    Paul Grams earned degrees in Linguistics and English Literature; he taught in the Detroit Public Schools, mostly grades 6-9, for 30 years; he ran scholastic chess programs there. He’s retired to Baltimore with grandchildren. Two books of his poems have been published.

  • Consolations after a Birth by Beth Sherman

    My books are sniping at one another
    Hurling accusations concerning inaccurate information
    On blood sugar and forceps.
    Later on in the week I will make a bonfire
    In the kitchen and scald their flapping tongues.
    A mobile over the crib jiggles uncertainly.
    The yellow bunny sneers at the spotted cow.
    It knows nothing of midwives. Quaint word
    From a simpler time when mothers died
    With rags stuffed in their mouths to muffle the screaming.
    I’ve discovered that I don’t need God.
    A gazelle sleeps beside me.
    I can feel its fur choking my breath,
    I can taste the grass on its hind legs,
    Alone in this angry house.
    —
    Beth Sherman received an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her fiction has been published in The Portland Review, Sandy River Review, Blue Lyra Review and Gloom Cupboard and is forthcoming in Delmarva Review and Rappahannock Review. Her poetry has been published in Hawaii Pacific Review, Hartskill Review, Lime Hawk, Synecdoche, Gyroscope and The Evansville Review, which nominated her poem, “Minor Planets” for a Pushcart Prize this year.

  • Six Years Old on her Grandparents’ Porch by Penelope Scambly Schott

    Her life seemed like two nights and one day
    where the first night had been birth
    and the last night would be her death
    and that single long day stretched so far ahead
    filled up with future and furniture
    she could almost rock in the white wicker chair
    and forgive the world for making her a child
    who sometimes still needed to hide
    behind the rocker where the porch screen
    pressed tiny diamonds onto her young cheek
    while the man on the tall Sunday Philco
    preached grandly Do unto others
    but this girl didn’t want to be done unto
    no she did not want to be so undone

    Penelope Scambly Schott’s most recent book is How I Became An Historian. She lives in Portland and Dufur, Oregon where she teaches an annual poetry workshop.

  • Floating World by Marian Olson

    Floating World

    Raven lands on the tallest pine,
    a sentry at his post,
    so orderly and calm
    at the end of the day,
    enough to make you believe
    chaos is illusion.

    The great tsunami has returnedfloating-world
    to its source, and the ocean
    glows with a gentle pulse
    in the sweet light of dusk.
    Yet who can forget this morning
    when the earth’s plates shifted
    and believe once again
    in the Garden of things?

    the moon rises
          the moon sets
                this floating world
    —

    Marian Olson, the author of seven books of poetry) lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Desert Hours (2008) won top recognition in both the Haiku Society America and the New Mexico Books Awards. Consider This (2012) won first place in the e-book competition of Snapshot Press in the U.K.

     

  • Like the Dancing Horse by Jenny McBride

    If they were fully aware
              the invested misery,
              the scathing abuse
              and the bludgeoning of perfection
    Would they renounce their gilded ease,
              their snappy playthings,
              hypnotic tomorrows?
    If we could show
              the privileged marauders
              who have never seen their own footprint
              the toll and mortgage of
              their artificial lifestyle,
              all the stock they’ve bought in climate change,
    Would they shriek and flee
              or gaze unapologetically
              like an audience that watches
              a live bear
              slowly lowered into the boiling water?

    Jenny McBride’s writing has appeared in The California Quarterly, Tidal Echoes, Green Social Thought, Star 82 Review and other journals.  She makes her home in the rainforest of southeast Alaska.