The Zingara Project

Tag: BLYNKT

  • ‘Tis the Season by Karen Wolf

    Blue eyes dripping sadness stare through dark
    rimmed glasses and Daddy’s Mopar
    truck windshield. My
    running pace allowing glimpses of his
    disproportionate pear-shaped scowl. Flashes
    of his life imagined
    schoolmate cruelties leveled for his
    countenance, name calling,
    social shunning, tripping, punches. A passing freight
    train halts my progress enabling a hello
    with Dad as he emerges from the post office, Christmas
    cookie in hand. His boyhood
    sadness crumbles away.
    —

    Karen Wolf has been published in Smokey Blue Literary and Art Magazine, The Wagon Magazine, Oasis Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review, The Drunken Llama, Blynkt, Raw Dog Press, Street Light Press, Lady Blue Literary Arts Journal, Ripcord Magazine and many others. Her chapbook, “That’s Just the Way it Is”, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018.

    She says that poetry soothes the savage beast and opens her eyes to the beauty that abounds within the world.

  • Do Not by Barbara Lawhorn

    Don’t fall in love ever again.
    Maybe, don’t trust yourself.
    Maybe only believe in what is
    tangible. Don’t use similes
    and metaphors so much in speech. Don’t

    let others know what you are thinking. Feeling.
    Doing next. Don’t plan ahead. Don’t plan meals.
    Don’t think. Don’t think the wind rustling the dead
    leaves, still hanging on, is God. Don’t

    expect. Anything. Don’t expect anyone.
    Anyone to make room for you in the homes
    of their lives. Or you for them. Get small. Get quiet.
    Work on disappearing into yourself. Think.
    Think bomb shelter, canned goods, flashlights, and sleeping
    bags. Zip yourself up. Listen. Listen. To the water rising
    in you; all that blood. Be a dead leaf casting away, first on air
    then on water. Use as few words as possible. As necessary.
    You aren’t a tree. Words aren’t branches. Words are icicles.
    Only hang them coldly, where they are really needed. Don’t

    press your body to anything or anyone. Let your body only
    be lodging wherever and whenever you are in the world. Don’t
    talk. Don’t send a telegram to the world; send one to yourself.
    Don’t smile unnecessarily. Set your face. Your skin isn’t Silly
    Putty. Much of the world is unfunny. Don’t

    laugh. What foolishness
    you swam in. How dare you? You wore optimism like a bikini
    that didn’t fit you. Take it off. No one will look at you,
    much less touch you, in your nakedness.

    —

    Barbara Lawhorn is an Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University. She’s into literacy activism, walking her dog, Banjo, running, baking and eating bread, and finding the wild places, within and outside. Her most recent work can be found at The Longleaf Pine, BLYNKT, Nebo: A Literary Magazine, and Naugatuck River Review. Her favorite creative endeavors are her kids, Annaleigh and Jack.