The Zingara Project

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  • Escape by John Short

    Pigeons in the chimney:
    dark symphony of trapped souls
    or distant death lament

    as weather mutters all around
    then through its gaps
    a spectral chorus on the wind
    forces me to move things never moved

    the brass-scream across old slate
    frees an avalanche of bones,
    dust, feathers and a chaos of wings
    exploding into daylight –

    they circle the room, collide with walls
    then settle on the highest shelf.

    I ponder the world’s misfortunes,
    how we suffer mostly
    but how sometimes we escape.

    —

    John Short lives in Liverpool and studied Creative Writing at Liverpool university. A previous contributor to Zingara Poetry Review, he’s appeared recently in Kissing Dynamite, One Hand Clapping and The Lake. His pamphlet Unknown Territory (Black Light Engine Room) was published in June. He blogs occasionally at Tsarkoverse.

  • Purple Vest by Peter Mladinic

    I had a job interview with a man with a purple vest
    in a city of lakes
    a city where in winter
    the temperature drops to twenty below
    a man who could afford a down jacket
    a garage
    a man with a moustache
    and whose surname of three syllables
    is similar to mine
    he wore a purple vest
    and a tie that at the time
    impressed me
    I described it in a sentence
    in a notebook I lost
    while moving from one part of the country
    to another, a smaller city
    on whose outskirts kudzu
    had engulfed tall trees
    I left my down jacket
    in the city
    where I’d sat across from Mr. M
    in his purple vest
    who asked about my employment record
    giving me papers with blank spaces
    and a pen to fill those spaces
    with details about what I’d done
    and might do

    —

    Peter Mladinic has published three books of poetry: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press.  He lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.

     

  • Study of an Orange by Diana Rosen

    The basket of fresh-picked oranges
    a nest of hardened pockmarked yolks
    buffed to an acceptable smoothness
    sits docile, waiting, fragrant with
    that sweet acid burst that draws you
    to pull off one stubborn leaf-dotted stem.
    Its spicy spray tickles your nose, rains.
    on your beard, smarts your eyes, still
    you keep tearing away the thick skin,
    scraping off the soft bitter pith
    to expose each plump section
    ready for your lips
    small expectant lips
    hidden under a snowy mustache
    wonderful lips
    that open slightly,
    give me citrus kisses
    my happy tongue
    licks into a smile.

    —

    Diana Rosen has published poetry in RATTLE, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, Poetry Super Highway, As It Ought to be Magazine, among others. Redbird Chapbooks will publish her forthcoming hybrid of poetry and flash, Love & Irony. To read more of her fiction and nonfiction, please visit www.authory.com/dianarosen

  • Autumn Elegy by Ginger Dehlinger

    Sól rises late
    on fields scorched sallow,
    weeds furred in frost.

    October’s metamorphosis
    ignites a red-orange wildfire
    in the treetops.
    It spreads to the undergrowth,
    curls the tongues of ferns,
    emblazons the carpet.

    The season’s gathering rust
    sends wild things for cover.
    Maples bleed
    before winter’s breath
    stiffens their bones.

    All too soon the leaf piles vanish
    in wisps of smoke
    from gasping funeral pyres.
    A cold shudder of wind
    stirs dust in the creek bed
    and the sun sets too soon.

    —

    Ginger Dehlinger writes in multiple genres. Although better known for her novels Brute Heart and Never Done, her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the 2019 Zingara Poetry Review Mother’s Day issue. You can find her in Bend, Oregon or at www.gdehlinger.blogspot.com

  • Painting Itself Red by Kim Baker

    The job of the poet is to render the world – to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do. 

    ~Mark Van Doren 

    Everything here is red,
    adorning scores of farmhouses, barns, and doors.
    The Wandering Moose Café and train station.
    The post office and Stage Coach Tavern.

    I wonder about a town that paints itself red.
    Insinuates a crimson theology in an indomitable land
    of evergreen groves, gray stone walls, and
    the righteous white of every Congregational Church.
    Perhaps the inhabitants strayed away 
    from shades of specters and blending in 
    when Dr. Dean built Red Mill in 1750.
    Maybe they needed cerise to rival the Gold family
    or hollyhock to stand out up on Cream Hill.
    In some towns, maybe red is a fetish,
    the iconic covered bridge representing everything.

    I compose on one of the many red benches
    spread here along the Housatonic River,
    perfect places for poets and other lovers,
    searching for an unsentimental shade.
    The cardinal gone from the maple tree.
    The wheelbarrow waiting for spring.
    The brick of my heart.

    —

    When she isn’t writing poetry about big hair and Elvis, Kim Baker works to end hunger and violence against women. A poet, playwright, photographer, and NPR essayist, Kim publishes and edits Word Soup, an online poetry journal (currently on hiatus) that donates 100% of submission fees to food banks. Kim’s chapbook of poetry, Under the Influence:  Musings about Poems and Paintings, is available from Finishing Line Press.      

  • Eyes Fastened with Poems by Lois Marie Harrod

    Made thing, mad thing
    mud and muddied thing—
    how hard the poem works

    shaping its ship of clay,
    what is there to discover?
    Sails aghast

    but still trying
    to suck life
    into the little vessel,

    shale becomes slate.
    Well, take up your chalk
    and walk.

    —

    Lois Marie Harrod’s 17th collection Woman was published by Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton. Links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org

     

  • In Step with Desire by Margaret Randall

    I always asked questions of the poem,
    sometimes even glimpsed an answer
    flying off to nurse its broken wing.

    Certainty lived between folds of skin:
    bright light, or shadow deep
    as a black hole in a distant universe.

    I measured distance in layers of color
    applied with a heavy brush,
    held escape in a tight fist.

    But in this, my ninth decade, I choke
    on those questions: warm milk
    promising what it cannot deliver.

    Place is change, cold monuments
    stand where love once promised
    to conquer all.

    Entitlement begs to borrow a harness
    made of melting ice
    tethered to this broken dawn.

    My map dissolves beneath storm clouds
    as I run between canyon walls
    pressing against my wanting.

    Each image struggles to find its way
    across a quartered landscape
    of memory unbound.

    Today’s questions boomerang,
    mock my practiced attempts
    to pin them to conviction.

    Uncertainty moves through my arteries
    calling my name in the minor key
    of ancestral catch and release.

    But not that uncertainty. Not that one.
    Some truths never die:
    in step, as they are, with desire.

    —

    Margaret Randall is a poet, essayist, translator and performer living in New Mexico. Her most recent poetry collection is Starfish on a Beach: Pandemic Poems, and her memoir, I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary was released by Duke University Press in March 2020. “In Step with Desire” will be featured in Randall’s forthcoming collection, Out of Violence Into Poetry, to be published by Wings Press in 2021.

     

  • Just a Snap by Kitty Jospé

    unmarked country road near Piffard (Avon) NY on Summer Day

    of rising blue hills beyond the fingered bones
    of a dead tree
                   and off to the right an old red truck perched
    by a fence in the tall grasses, with its hood up, as a dirt road
    climbs by to pass it.

    It’s just a framed moment of a chance look—
    a possible diagonal conversation between an abandoned truck
    and shattered tree branches to the bottom left

                   or perhaps that splintered rubble
    of branches would prefer reassuring the shadow of a small unseen tree
    it won’t meet the fate that felled its parent trunk.

    In just a chance snap,
                   opportunities to imagine what could have been,

    the mind wondering if it’s fair to ascribe abandoned
    to that truck, and how many heartbeats are left,
    if any, to the one who drove it there.

    A snap of a moment, a shot
    caught in time, waiting for some
    stranger kicking down the road.

     

     
    —
    Kitty Jospé: MA French Literature, New York University; MFA Poetry, Pacific University, OR. She embraces the joy of working with language and helping others to become good readers of poems, people and life.Her work is in 5 books, published since 2009 and numerous journals and anthologies.

  • Squat by Gale Acuff

    I don’t want to die but I’m not crazy
    about living, neither, I’m ten years old
    and could live a lot longer, multiply
    a decade’s worth of sin and sorrow by
    ten and that’s a century of shit, not
    that good things won’t happen among the bad
    but I’m not so sure of that now, I got
    kicked out of Sunday School today because
    I asked if Adam had a navel, Eve
    as well, and that’s all she wrote – my teacher
    gave me the heave-ho so now I’m squatting
    on somebody’s headstone in the back of
    our church, it’s as quiet as death, ha ha,
    except for some mockingbirds and robins
    so fat they can hardly chirp and when
    class is over I guess I’ll go to her
    and apologize, my teacher that is,
    I guess there are some questions you don’t ask,
    I don’t mean that they’re bad – they’re just too good.

    —

    Gal Acuff’s poems can be found in such literary journals as Ascent, Reed, Poet Lore, Chiron Review, Cardiff Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, and many other journals in eleven countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives. Gale has also taught university English courses in the US, China, and Palestine.

     

     

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  • How Do We Determine What Mars Is Made Of by Christina M. Rau

    Sampling and photographs
    over years until drying out.
    A flight of ages. When they go
    they go for good.
    They say goodbye
    and know the silting red
    will be dug up for graves.
    They know the shallow dips
    and angled hills will be
    playgrounds, outbacks, landscape
    views for all. They know money
    doesn’t matter. After setting down.
    The rovers didn’t need to
    disconnect in this
    way. They did and then they
    did not.
    In millennia
    it will be human bone in the loam.

    —

    Christina M. Rau is the author of the Elgin Award-winning poetry collection, Liberating The Astronauts (Aqueduct Press) and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove and For The Girls, I. She is Editor-in-chief for The Nassau Review at Nassau Community College and founder of the Long Island poetry circuit Poets In Nassau. http://www.christinamrau.com

  • Hollow by Robert Beveridge

    Sap drips
    from the blades
    of pine needles
    that surround us
    as we lie
    on the Navajo blanket
    grandmother brought
    back from New Mexico

    the pine
    has been eaten by something
    leaves a crevice
    where we rest our heads

    a dry sanctuary
    from expected rain

    I carve our initials
    inside the shell
    before we leave
    surround them
    with traditional heart
    and arrow

    a first moment
    of love
    solid as pine.

    —

    Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Blood and Thunder, Feral, and Grand Little Things, among others.

  • First Day at Sts. Philip and James by John C. Mannone

    Diesel exhaust seeped through the open window.
    Almost made me sick, but my stomach churned
    already from nervousness. My first day in school.

    My blue blazer, brushed free from lint, felt tight
    when I sat on the bus’ green leather seat.
    I didn’t think to unbutton it. But the ride was short.

    The First Grade classroom seemed littered
    with many papers pinned to the walls; an alphabet
    was strung around the room like a party decoration.

    It was scary because I didn’t know what the letters
    meant. I didn’t even know what a letter was,
    but I remember my momma trying to teach me.

    The Sisters of St. Francis wore a thick chord
    fashioned around their waist that dangled down.
    It looked like a whip. I was scared about that, too.

    When I went to the bathroom, I didn’t know
    what to do—I never saw a vertical urinal before,
    only sit-down toilets. When I let my pants fall

    to the floor, the other boys laughed; they laughed
    harder when they saw me pee. I thought
    I did something wrong. I thought the nuns

    were going to spank me with that chord.

    —

    John C. Mannone has work in North Dakota Quarterly, Le Menteur, 2020 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, and others. He won the Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and others.

  • split pea soup by Jan Ball

    Just after we were married, you tried to make
    split pea soup at my parents trailer in Wisconsin
    but the split peas wouldn’t soften; still, musty
    smells mixed with the piney fragrance from outdoors
    stimulated our appetites–probably the split peas
    were on the pine wood shelf in the little country store
    with the squeaky screen door for years, but you wanted
    to make split pea soup on vacation in the Dells.

    Tonight, the green peas I substitute for yellow ones
    aren’t soft yet but I can smell the flavors blending:
    like so many years ago, onions, ginger, apple and
    sweet potato left over from Thanksgiving, with
    coriander, cumin and turmeric. But there is no hurry.
    You aren’t home yet and Lake Michigan outside
    the window is conducive to navy blue reflection.
    When you do return, finally, I’ll add the tart lime juice
    and acidic tomatoes before serving to the simmering soup
    for a contrast of flavors.

    —

    Jan Ball has had 325 poems published in various journals including: Atlanta Review,
    Calyx, Chiron, Mid-America Review, Nimrod and Parnassus, in Australia, Canada,
    Czech Republic, England, India and The U.S.. Jan’s three chapbooks and full
    length poetry collection, I Wanted To Dance With My Father, are available from
    Finishing Line Press and Amazon.

  • Nisi Warrior by MSG (Ret) Hubert C. Jackson

    Dedicated to the second born generation of Japanese-Americans who, in spite of the treatment of incarceration dealt to, in many cases, themselves, their friends and families, still chose to support the war effort of a nation who had turned a deaf ear to the cries of its citizens.

    Ancestral essence from the “Land of the Rising Sun,” and societal influences from the “Home of the Brave – Land of the Free” have combined to make me.  Driven by the soul of the Sumari, and a desire to be a contributing factor in the day-to-day functioning of this land, I ask nothing more than to be recognized as a citizen of this nation from sea to sea.

    We are the Nisei, sons of the Issei, and fathers of the Sensei, and America is our homeland too, and during one of the most challenging times in our history, we stepped forward to defend our country in the European theater in some of the most vicious fighting during World War II.  We stood proudly, fought bravely, sacrificed, and many died for the cause of the “Red, White, and Blue.”  All of this in spite of Executive Order 9066, which incarcerated my family, friends, and relatives in substandard barbed-wire enclosures, signed into effect in February 1942.

    We comprised the 100th Infantry Battalion )Separate), better known as the “Purple Heart Battalion,” and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and in fighting for our country, we also fought for the realization of our dream, that of regaining, for ourselves, and our families, the rights of free American citizens, and to reconstruct our shattered self-esteem.

    —

    Hubert C. Jackson is a graduate student at the Union Institute and University enrolled in their Interdisciplinary Studies Program with an emphasis on African American Military History. He spent twenty-four years of active military service in the United States Army, twenty of those twenty-four years were spent in the Army’s Special Forces (Green Berets) serving with some of the finest soldiers that one could wish to serve with.

  • Online Writing Workshops for September

     Yoga and Memoir Workshop: Write, Heal, Transform Join me and yoga instructor Jessica Merritt via Zoom from 6:30-8:30pm Thursdays in September for 4 weeks (September 3, 10, 17, & 24). Get all the benefits of a home practice with the support of professional instructors Jessica Merritt and Lisa Hase-Jackson and fellow yogi/writers. Participants will be led through a 30 minute yoga series followed by memoir writing exercises and instruction. Stay centered AND start or make progress on your memoir this September and feel good doing it. The cost for this class is $199. Email zingarapoet@gmail.com to register.

    Advanced Poetry Workshop: a six-week advanced poetry workshop and study group from September 8 to October 13 which will meet on Tuesdays from 8:30pm – 10:30pm Eastern via Zoom with email and Google doc supplements. Each week we will discuss select chapters from “Why Poetry” by Matthew Zapruder, “Madness, Rack and Honey” by Mary Ruefle, and “The Flexible Lyric” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, particularly in terms of whether or not they affect our relationship with poetry, our sense of craft, or our revision process. Some weeks we will focus on generating new work and other weeks we will focus on works-in-progress and/or revision. Participants will be expected to have their own copies of the books. Some supplemental material may be provided. The cost for this class is $120. Email zingarapoet@gmail.com to register.