Un Chien Andalou by James Penha

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after—well after—Luis Buñuel’s 1929 film

I finger the stropped razor ready
to slice an eyeball
surrealistically enough
to turn my head in the clouds
cutting the moon and so who is blind?
she? he? me? eyes curbed after the bike collapses
and we are undressed for bed with ants in hand. Give her
a hand! I want to hold your hand;
the accidental dead want to hold breast and butt hold
on she tosses
she will serve no fault—
the undead eschew tennis
for a strongest man competition lugging
grand steinways, church, dead
dog. Dead? The undress awakens aroused by a dick
demanding he make a man or two of himself
to read to write to duel like Burr and Hamilton
in a New Jersey meadow from which a moth
on the New Jersey shore on which a melted watch
tells who lives who dies who tells your story

A native New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past quarter-century in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his verse appears this year in Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness published by Oxford UP and Lovejets: queer male poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman from Squares and Rebels. His essay “It’s Been a Long Time Coming” was featured in The New York Times “Modern Love” column in April 2016. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Twitter: @JamesPenha

2019 Best of the Net Nominations

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Zingara Poetry Review is happy to announce 2019’s “Best of the Net” Nominees:
 
A Flower Rests by Jerry Wemple, September 5, 2018
 
Insomniac by Danielle Wong, October 3, 2018
 
 
Poems must meet the following minimum qualifications for nomination:
  • Submissions must come from the editor of the publication (journal, chapbook, online press, etc), or, if the work is self-published, it must be sent by the author.
  • Submissions must have originally appeared online, though later print versions are acceptable.
  • The poem, story, or essay must have been first published or appeared on the web between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019.
  • Submissions must be sent between July 1st and September 30th, 2019.

Best of luck to this year’s nominees!!

Columbus Day by Jenny McBride

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Oh Cris Columbus
How I wish you hadn’t come here.
Five hundred years of your celebrations
Have scraped the birds thin
Drained the fish dry
Made the rock cry.
The Vikings sailed back
When their Vinland grew cold
But you wrapped your future
In buffalo robes
And now I don’t know where to turn
When I want to go home.

—

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

I Would by Hugh Cook

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My nails are shining Lavender,
I’m afraid you don’t see me.

I wish someone would rub
Sunburnt arms with aloe,
So I could tell them I wasn’t sore.

I felt the love’s weight
As I tried to breathe
With no woman pressing into me,
Once I stopped the chattering TV.
I can feel the weight, lost,
Like I starve myself, so far
Inside does love carve.

I would sit outdoors,
At a warming bench all light time,
To hear “Hi,” receive “Hello.”

—

Hugh Cook attends University of California, Santa Barbara, studying Writing and Literature. He has authored a collection titled The Day it Became a Circle (Afterworld Books). His poetry has been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Ariel Chart, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Blue Unicorn.

green by Molly Flanagan

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Daddy lost his job last year
and the year before
and momma hers the years before that
but momma got herself a job back
we bought a car to get from here to there
to job and back
for daddy to teach me to drive when i’m
already ripe and smoking
the joint between momma’s forefinger and
thumb passing around like paper wrapped
golden leaf worth more than daddy and momma
and the siding around us sleeping at night in
the beds we pay for in dying
breaths from momma’s hospice patients and the meat
daddy ripped cut slapped the months years decades leading up to
the fire
which burns in our fingers from drivers seat to passenger to
the back i sit in leather seats
wearing three necklaces thrown from a town truck
returned from retirement
no more rusty bumpers and highway calls.

I’m covered in green
shamrocks like me with shiny beads
Emerald gold purple
If wrapped further around me, my neck,
heritage wrapped around my neck in the fake carnation in the lapel of the corduroy 1970s jacket i found in the basements in the years when the girls had friends down and the smoke got all in the fabrics and daddy had
green to pay
for the cleaners to trudge up the smoke in the couch into black corduroy
now covered freckled flesh
green like momma says
daddy on the sidewalk with the little ones
catching candy and necklaces for me to drape over dirty hair
which ripples blonde down pale cheeks
running away from the motherland
her mossy face moist at midnight or three in the afternoon whatever time momma and daddy want to get high
And forget about the Troubles.

—

Molly Flanagan is currently a senior at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven, Connecticut, where she works as Associate Editor of Folio, the undergraduate literary and art journal at SCSU. Her visual art and short stories have also been published in Folio and ANGLES. This past spring, Molly was awarded the 2019 Creative Writing Award by SCSU English Department.

On Packing the Only Painting You Left by Daniel Crasnow

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            A Golden Shovel

I never asked myself about you. I did hope, though, that May-
Be you would remember this empty room. Believe me, I never
Wondered if you would return. I knew. (T)Here
The sun rose at 8. Once upon a time, the
Sun bloomed at 8 too. Now that plaster
Painting isn’t worth the trouble. Dirty brushes and stir-
Red colors aren’t worth the wash. As soon as
You left you said goodbye and if
I had just stood up to say “no”… You le(f)t me in
A wardrobe of wilting aloe, plastic flower crowns and pain.
I broke with the door hinges; laughed about it, that May-
Be If I wasn’t so frightened or if I had never
Given a fuck I wouldn’t be the only one to hear
My heart-beat. May-be the
Cold clouds of a Florida summer wouldn’t click like roaches
In an empty moving box. I wouldn’t let this falling
Slush remind me of all the paintings you did take with you. Like
The crow who eats too many berries, and falls fat,
Drunk and remembering— may-be then I’d learn to enjoy the rain.

[1] Last words in The Ballad of Rudolph Reed by Gwendolyn Brooks

—

Daniel Crasnow is a multi-genre writer and scholar at Stetson University where he holds a Sullivan Scholarship in creative writing. He has been awarded a scholarship to attend the DISQUIET International Literary Program (2018) and was a resident at the DISQUIET Azores Residency (2018).

In Dissent by Tom D’Angelo

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Both foreign and familiar
you patrol the hidden
America.

You don’t care about
selling the most
cookies.

You know how
to tell a joke but you don’t
want to.

You’ve learned to be
suspicious
learned to be always
on the lookout.

You’ve heard the stories
from the battlefields—
academic, financial, political

and yet you refuse
to run away and join
the circus even though
relationships create
obligations,

so you walk
in perpetual Lent
concentrating ashy guilt and
polishing it to a
rough luster

for you need things
to be raw &
heavy
and irritating
to the eye.

Tom D’Angelo works in the Writing Center at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY, and teaches courses in Mythology, Film and Literature, and Creative Writing. In addition to poetry, his current projects include a series of creative non-fiction essays on his formative years in Queens, NY. His poems have most recently appeared in The Flatbush Review.

remnants by Bara Elhag

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near an alpine singer
sewing machine
Earl Grey tea rests
near pattern parchment
mama picked one of these

burdas to unburden her mind
which regularly cliff dwells
what she makes is
not as relevant as
making

sweet ’n’ sour chicken
featuring my cup spilling
for dinner, table clean now

downstairs, antique lace lives to the
morning along with
gauze and cotton
in an embroidered “organized” blue basket

I think that basket was lost in a move.

—
Bara Elhag was born in Alexandria, Egypt in January 1996 and has spent most of 9 years living half in Minnesota and half in Egypt. He received his high school diploma from America  and graduated from Rutgers University in 2018. Bara is currently pursuing a M.S. in biomedical sciences and has a good family, wonderful friends, loves soccer, hummus, and jalapenos. He also treasure traveling and spontaneous journeys to NYC, when his bank account allows for it.

 

Plans by Jen Schneider

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One question. That’s all I have.  How long did you plan?
I’m a planner. Are you?
Earlier that day I took a test after years of prep.
And a lifetime of crap.
At 12 PM, the testing timer buzzed.
High pitched and loud. Others jumped. Not me.
I planned my time well.
Dropped my #2 pencil. Wiped
my sticky palm across my leg.
Twisted my ring counter-clockwise, twice.
Heck, I’ll take good vibes any day.
The computer processed scores.
I passed. Like I had always planned.
At 2 PM, I was a newly minted EMT.
Planning to save others my entire life.
First, I’d celebrate at a favorite club.
Like I had always planned.
With my study pals. Friends for life.
Wearing matching leather jackets and our favorite denim.
Before scrubs would become our preferred attire.
At 8 PM, we waited at the crowded entrance.
Joking about the trick question,
the one about cardiac arrest, that we each got right.
At 8:09, I felt it.
At 8:10, I felt nothing.
I never planned to be the victim of a random act of violence.
One of many. Last year, our city lost 100s to drive-bys.
The year to date rate climbs higher.
I planned to be an EMT my entire life.
Studying manuals. Saving pennies.
A day off from my minimum wage
dead-end job at the warehouse,
near the corner of Broad and 10th,
to sit for the test that would change my life.
Then, it was over. Because of you.
How long did you plan?

—

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. Her work appears in The Coil, The Write Launch, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, One Sentence Stories, and other literary and scholarly journals.

When I Got My Ears Pierced by Sophie Cohen

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Well, I was walking trying to mind my business
and guess who came by on his bike!
Yes, it was him and his hair was short,
if you can believe he’d let someone cut his hair.
He stopped to call my name and come beside me,
walking his bike and the chain came off.
Do you mind waiting just a minute?
And I waited, because there is something about his voice
I’ve always liked, and I wanted him to walk
beside me, asking questions people don’t ask.
Do you go to New York a lot?
I said I did, sometimes, but I don’t like it there.
We should go. In the summer.
He even went so far as to ask where I was walking,
so I said to get my ears pierced, and he asked
if I had any other piercings on my body,
as if he’d never seen me naked.
But no, I said, I only have them on my ears.
Then he was away on his bike,
and for a sudden moment it was the fall again,
when at the crossroads as he walked me to the doctor
I said I knew the rest of the way, and it was raining,
and I saw his eyes afraid before he turned and ran
down the street, catching the arrow green.

—

Sophie Cohen is a rising junior at MIT, where she studies mathematics and creative writing. She is a writer for MIT Chroma Magazine, and a teaching assistant for calculus. An active member of her sorority, Alpha Phi, Sophie leads the fundraising effort for the Boston Walk to End Lupus Now. Her favorite poet is Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

Paperplane letters by Kristina Gibbs

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Love was pressed between
Stained smudges of downy diction
            Creased along the edges
Bent over backwards
            Then folded forward
Sealed by the weight of waxy hope
Sent with a flick—
but the sun beat on
      And on
      And on
So it flut ter ed
            Falt er
      ed
                Fall
            ing
Hitting the water
A distraught Icarus.
The whole of its failure upon it
Contributed to its
Sinking.
Words raged
And swirled
Unleashed—
            Torn open
Harboured in
The inky black deep.
—
Kristina Gibbs is an emerging writer from Tennessee pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English and minor in Linguistics. She has previously published in Speaking of Marvels and North of Oxford Review. When she is not reading or writing, you may find her clambering over both hiking trails and paint brushes.

a modern sonnet by Cleopatra Lim

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i know that it is okay because i said yes but it should mean
that i don’t have to feel like a suckling pig before slaughter
and i did this, i think, to feel like an adult now that i’m eighteen
but i went too far– i go too far– ten bucks that he has a daughter

somehow i can see myself in an hour, picking the curly aged hairs he shed
off polka-dotted sheets that laid witness to my first lunar blood
and soon he’ll unlock my beloved chest, spill jewels of cherry-red–
hindsight says once a flower blooms, it’ll never again be a bud

but reason and rationale are always late and the party don’t start
til they walk in and see me: emptied and filled with cheap wine
and tears… they said when it happened, i would feel in my heart
completed, perfected, and his gaze would be sugary sunshine….

instead the bed shakes and i am seasick until the north star, i can mark.
he tries to see me but he can’t. i am with the stars that glow in the dark.

—

Cleopatra Lim is a student currently attending Columbia University. She most enjoys writing prose poetry and personal essays, and has been published in some smaller literary journals. She currently works in NYC as a marketing assistant and a junior agent at a talent agency. In the future, she hopes to be able to work with both film and writing, working to incorporate poetry on to the big screen.

Eden by Kayleigh Macdonald

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We all have ways to weigh ourselves.
Eden’s way: stay in motion.
She would still the silence by
praying to God, eating her vegetables,
journaling in the achy fog of morning.
She would lean against the counter when she stopped.
Chairs were much too comfortable.
I never saw it was defense
until I, too,
heard bees in my head.
I see myself in Eden’s race
against the unfair haste of silent time.
There isn’t ease in inner peace
when a piece of you is missing.

—

Kayleigh Macdonald was born and raised in San Jose, CA. She is a recent graduate of California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Communication and a Minor in English.

 

 

10 More WordPress-Hosted Sites Accepting Poetry

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Allegheny Review:  The Allegheny Review, now entering its 32nd year of publication, is one of America’s few nationwide literary magazines dedicated exclusively to undergraduate works of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and artwork. Published annually, the periodical showcases some of the best literature the nation’s undergraduates have to offer.

Burning House Press: Burning House Press is born from a community arts ethos and focus. We seek to cultivate spaces where people feel safe and encouraged to explore and express their creativity. We hold a belief in the power of creativity, and share a faith in the fundamental connectivity of all peoples, especially as expressed through the commonality and community of multi-disciplinary arts. We believe that capitalism and its attendant profit culture is a public health issue, affecting us all on the level of our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health and well-being.

Calamus Journal: A monthly publication of poetry and visual art. The journal is named after the “Calamus” poems, a group of male-male love poems from Walt Whitman’s collection Leaves of Grass. We seek work that stuns with what it has to say as well as how it says it. We like treatises on identity, mixtures of the literary and scientific, and form as function. We have zero tolerance for xenophobia or bigotry of any sort. For more information about who we are and what we’re all about, check out our interview with Jim Harrington of the “Six Questions for…” project.

Echo Literary Magazine: Submit work via Microsoft Word as an attachment including the cover letter. All submissions must be emailed no later than the 28th of each month to echoliteraryjournal@gmail.com. If your story is accepted or rejected you will receive an email. Deadlines for stories: 28th of each month. ALL RIGHTS: The right to own your work. You are free to reprint your material or to sell it elsewhere after publication.

Eyes+ Words: Words have immense power and, when used responsibly, they can help shape the world in hopes to make a better tomorrow. Let’s come together and share a story or two. Please feel free to share your original poetry/stories and we will gladly post them on our website, full credit will be given. Email us: EyesPlusWords@gmail.com

The Green Light: publishes multiple times a year.  We accept submissions on a rolling basis, but we will provide deadlines for each issue. Sprinkled amongst our regular issues will be a few fantastic special issues.

Gulf Stream Literary Magazine: Publishing emerging and established writers of exceptional fiction, nonfiction and poetry since 1989. We also publish interviews and book reviews. Past contributors include Sherman Alexie, Steve Almond, Jan Beatty, Lee Martin, Robert Wrigley, Dennis Lehane, Liz Robbins, Stuart Dybek, David Kirby, Ann Hood, Ha Jin, B.H. Fairchild, Naomi Shihab Nye, F. Daniel Rzicznek, and Connie May Fowler. Gulf Stream Magazine is supported by the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

Little Patuxent Review: Little Patuxent Review is a community-based publication focused on writers and artists from the Mid-Atlantic region, but all excellent work originating in the United States will be considered.Although our issues are organized around themes, we allow considerable leeway in how contributors interpret them in order to ensure access to the broadest range of high-quality work.

Wild Goose Poetry Review is an online journal of poetry, reviews, and poetry-related news, edited by Scott Owens, located in North Carolina. To facilitate further conversation about the poetry in the Goose, Wild Goose posts commentary by the poets and invites readers to leave their comments as well. All comments are screened by the editors to insure appropriateness. The intention is to publish new issues of Wild Goose in mid February, mid May, mid August, and mid November. Reality, however, sometimes intercedes with such plans. Submissions for each issue close at the end of the month preceding publication.

Wolff Poetry Literary Journal: Now open to accepting poetry submissions— we publish poetry from unpublished or emerging poets. We will accept published pieces too. We don’t charge a reading fee, unsolicited pieces, and are open 365 days a year.

Want to add a wordpress-hosted literary journal to the list? Send a link to ZingaraPoet@gmail.com

10 WordPress-Hosted Literary Journals Accepting Poetry Submissions

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  1. Dogwood – A Journal of Poetry and Prose: An annual national literary journal seeking works from writers during its fall reading period each year. We publish fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction of both contest winners and other writers in May of each year. The literary journal is produced by the faculty in the Department of English at Fairfield University, and Fairfield undergraduate students gain hands-on experience in helping to edit and produce the journal by taking EN 340: The World of Publishing or The World of Publishing II.
  2. The Magnolia Review The Magnolia Review was born in October 2011 by Bowling Green State University creative writing undergraduates. Suzanna Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief and Founder. Please visit the Submit tab for information on how to submit. While The Magnolia Review will not have physical copies at this time, the editors may compile a print version if funds become available. We publish two issues a year, deadlines on November 15 and May 15. The issue will be available January 15 and July 15 online.
                                                                              
  3. The Mantle: Founded in 2017, The Mantle is an online quarterly journal dedicated to contemporary poetry. We’ll publish the most memorable poems we receive. When the time comes, we’ll nominate for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Find our submission guidelines here.
                                                   
  4. Naugatuck River Review: This is a literary journal founded in order to publish and in doing so to honor good narrative poetry. We publish twice a year. Our first edition was Winter 2009.  A print issue will be available through this site for purchase. It will also be available for download. Publication rights will revert to the author of the poem and we do not pay for poetry published. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please inform us if your work is accepted elsewhere. Naugatuck River Review is dedicated to publishing narrative poetry in the tradition of great narrative poets such as Gerald Stern, Philip Levine or James Wright.
  5. Panoply, A Literary Zine: Join us here for a wide-ranging and impressive array of writing.
                                                        
  6. Peacock Journal: Have you ever been so attracted to something, you just wanted to be close to it? You just wanted to exist within the same space? Or have you ever seen something so beautiful you thought it might be a door to another world? And all you desired, with the entirety of your being, was to pass through that door, into that other place, and just exist there for a little while? It’s not a separate reality, it’s a heightened, more intense reality, fuller and more complete. Write that and send it to us. It’s really difficult. It’s far easier to write gritty and pedestrian. But try it. Send us something about water and wind and light and the interplay of harmonies between them.
  7. Pearl S. Buck Writing Center Literary Journal: See website for current submission guidelines.

  8. Quill’s Edge Press: QuillsEdge Press is dedicated to publishing the poetry of women over the age of 50. We offer an annual chapbook contest during the fall and winter, and beginning in 2017, an annual anthology of new, emerging, and established women poets called 50/50: Poems and Translations by Women Over 50.                                                                                              
  9. Seshat – A Homeschool Literary Magazine:  Submissions will be open until September 1, 2017. Please review the submission guidelines before submitting your pieces to our email. All pieces will be reviewed immediately upon being received.The inaugural issue of this journal is planned for release on September 15, 2017. Any further news regarding this new release will be updated as time passes.

  10. Sliver of Stone:   a nonprofit online literary magazine. Our editors are the talented progeny of the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. Our mission is to provide for a web-based environment for outstanding literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art from around the globe. We want to expand the influence of these genres beyond their traditionally academic audiences.

Want to add a wordpress-hosted literary journal to the list? Send a link to ZingaraPoet@gmail.com