The Zingara Project

Tag: Ariel Chart

  • Spurious Claims by Mark Tulin

    The sidewalk healer witnessing
    in the house of spurious claims,
    preached faith and transcendence,
    promised miracles with each dollar
    dropped in the collection bucket.

    He gave simple answers
    to all of life’s complex problems
    into one magical moment,
    wrapped in a neatly-tied bow
    and delivered to your door.

    Believe in how the spirit works, he’d say,
    and give you the same line;
    the same worn-out phrases
    as he sermonized yesterday.

    He claims to be a partner
    with the all-knowing,
    a six-figured salesman
    who thumps the podium
    with a lunatic’s conviction
    without caution or delay.

    He’s a rainmaker
    who can’t form clouds,
    a fisherman
    who’s never cast a spinning reel,
    and as much as he kneels and bobs,
    he never could turn water into wine.

    —

    Mark is a former therapist who lives in California.  He has a chapbook, Magical Yogis, and two upcoming books: Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. He’s been featured in Fiction on the Web, Ariel Chart, Amethyst Magazine, among others.  His website is Crow On The Wire.

     

     

  • Safe by Karlo Sevilla

    “Along the sidewalk,
    always safest along the sidewalk,”
    father used to say.
    (A truck may swerve,
    roll over the sidewalk
    and pin you against
    a lamppost…)
    Still, always safest
    along the sidewalk.

    I wear my brand new pair
    of Air Jordan while I walk
    on the sidewalk.
    (They’re affordable
    and look and feel great
    as the real deal.)

    I’m safe as I stroll
    with my shoes
    on the sidewalk.

    —

    Karlo Sevilla is the author of “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Radius, Matter, Yellow Chair Review, Eunoia, Poetry24, The Ramingo’s Porch, Ariel Chart, In Between Hangovers, in the anthologies of Peacock Journal, Eternal Remedy, Riverfeet Press, and Azoth Khem Publishing, and elsewhere.

     

  • Rehearsal Hall by Diana Rosen

    She loves hanging out in Wattles Park gazing
    at the lush community garden tilled by urban dwellers
    eager for the primitive feel of dark, moist earth. It’s an anomaly,
    this patch of tilled land among the apartments with character
    and never enough parking of contemporary Hollywood. She
    comes to play her pear wood recorder, mouthpiece worn smooth
    as velvet, sharp edges of note holes melting into her fingers
    as the motets and minuets dance among tomatoes, bok choy,
    mustard greens. She sits among ruins of an edifice with a half column
    there, stone bench here, rain-washed cement floor of barely visible
    hand-painted fleur-de-lis. Stars of the movies, decked out in tuxedoes
    and satin gowns would arrive here in long black limousines,
    like a shiny line of ants, to take their places under the moon applauding
    for performances without the ever present camera. She imagines
    Isadora Duncan dancing across the stage, her signature white silk scarf
    floating behind her or Paderewski, playing sending thunderous notes
    on the ivory keys, soaring up the heavens. Her own music seems so small
    against the memory of these great talents but she continues for the pure
    pleasure it brings her, laughs when the cornstalks undulate as if to say,
    Encore! Dusk falls as she packs up, walks down the sloping dirt path,
    stopping every few trees to crush pine needles in her hands for the burst
    of scent. She detours to re-visit ancient yellow roses struggling to stay
    alive, peers into the dilapidated teahouse where a once-vivid scroll hangs,
    its faded calligraphy a glimpse of disciplined beauty. A rusted brazier
    awaits honored guests. At the bottom the hill, she turns to gaze up,
    wonders what Duncan and Paderewski thought about entertaining the elite
    of the silver screen on summer nights redolent with rose and pine.

    —

    Diana Rosen’s flash fiction and poetry have been published in anthologies and journals including, among others, Kiss Me Goodnight, Altadena Poetry Review, Rattle, Tiferet Journal, Silver Birch Press, Ariel Chart, and Poetic Diversity. She has published thirteen non-fiction books. and teaches free-write classes at senior citizen centers.