The Zingara Project

Tag: Abyss & Apex

  • 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.

  • Coldsurge by John C. Mannone

                After ‘Heatwave’ by Ted Hughes

    Between Huntingburg and frozen Indianapolis
    The Midwest plains had entered the fly’s belly.

    Like black-eyed rabbits half-buried in snow
    My plane shudders in the icy wind.

    The illusion of a runway is so real
    Trees sprout on it, and human carcasses.

    Only droning of the engine
    And no beacons for the hapless.

    I cannot penetrate the silence till sunset
    Releases its raptor

    Over the clouds, and birds are suddenly
    Everywhere, and my pilot’s flesh

    freezes in the breathing-in of great eagles.

    —
    John C. Mannone has work in Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Peacock Journal, Baltimore Review, 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. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com

     

  • Let Me Explain by F. J. Bergmann

    Center stage in the Theater of the Observed, who am I to say
    that my voice is pleasant or my manners abysmal? Or something
    cataclysmal: a nexus of disaster, like knots that form spontaneously
    in windblown hair, and you try to pass them off as incipient dreadlocks,
    but no one believes you.

    I’m reluctantly approaching the age when the light at the other end
    of the carpal tunnel is a hot flash of … of loss of memory or …
    or rage! that was it! when you find yourself in an existential backwater,
    indistinct drifting forms slowly decaying in the sick conviction
    of temperature gradients,

    saturated with the metameric violet of an interminable hour
    where the monitor screen radiates a sickly glare the ethereal hue
    of Himalayan poppies, flecked with rows of suspect symbols
    like maggots paralyzed in mid-writhe and just as capable of producing
    an itching, irritated brain.

    My soul is portable and an unpleasant shade of green that wants
    embroidering, which I take to mean ostentatious lying. I don’t know what
    to make for supper tonight—thinking of alcohol, but it’s too much trouble …
    so I’ll just recycle leftover bad moods that won’t invalidate the warranty
    on my liver and lights.

    And when that fails to delight, I’ll come up with an enhancement device
    to effortlessly trigger a slow roll into the next moment, temporary levitation
    resulting in a mysterious accident: a loud splash from the room next door,
    where you and your spotted dog run quickly to slip on that broken thing
    melting on the floor.

    —

    F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com) and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Work appears in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov’s SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. A Catalogue of the Further Suns won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest.