The Zingara Project

Tag: Calyx

  • Marilyn Monroe by Ellen Saunders

    We applaud, adore and adorn
    the holiday tree in Rockefeller Plaza,
    embellish its natural beauty
    and render it unrecognizable.
    When its brief stint in the starlight
    is over, the man-made magic
    gone, we’ll carry it to place far
    from view. Reluctantly, we’ll return
    to our tired selves, all the while knowing
    that there’s always next year. Another tree
    that once held a winter’s worth of snow
    in its arms. Another star on the horizon.
    Another chance to build up and tear down.
    The possibilities are endless.

    —

    Ellen Saunders’ work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Toronto Quarterly, Calyx, Pearl, Apple Valley Review, among others. Her first chapbook, Masquerad” was published by Long Leaf Press. She is currently working on a second collection.

  • Reverend Billy’s Boogie Woogie and Mom’s Gulbransen by Gianna Russo

    The Palladium Theatre, Saint Petersburg, FL.

    We’re here for the Hillbilly Deathmatch.
    Two balladeers duking it out:
    heartbreak vs. boogie woogie
    Les Paul guitar vs. Steinway Baby Grand.
    The Friday Night music palace seeps age and glory–
    rows of faded velvet seats, wooden backs worn smooth
    from decades of sweat and delight.

    The balladeer’s got the guitar: his fingerwork is a cheery stroll,
    his second-tenor-muttered lyrics walking us around the yard,
    down the block to the intersection of Heartbroke and Wanting More.
    We’re referees: our seat-shifting and half-yawns call it:
    no way is that round going to him.

    Then Reverend Billy stomps on stage
    in a cowboy zoot suit and kickass boots.
    He pounces on the ivories, his hands
    the tarantella, the electric slide, the St. Vitus dance of boogie woogie.
    We hoot and jive in our seats.
    It’s a musical K.O.

    God, it feels good to get shaken this way,
    after months of putting the house to sleep,
    forcing a coma on one room at a time.
    Rev says he want to slow it down, play somethin pretty.
    Melodic and melancholy, it takes me
    to my mother’s back room
    where her old upright Gulbransen sags unsold, untuned.
    She filled the house with show tunes and old standards–
    South Pacific, Annie Get Your Gun, her low alto tremolo.
    It’s been mute for years.

    Rev caresses the Steinway.
    Behind him the velvet curtains are crenelated, ballooned.
    Above him the stage lights are blue as my mother’s eyes.

    —

    Gianna Russo is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Moonflower (Kitsune Books), winner of a Florida Book Awards bronze medal, and two chapbooks, including one based on the art work of Vermeer, The Companion of Joy (Green Rabbit Press). Russo is founding editor of YellowJacket Press, (www.yellowjacketpress.org ), Florida’s publisher of poetry chapbook manuscripts. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published poems in Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Apalachee Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, Karamu, The Bloomsbury Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, saw palm, Kestrel, Tampa Review, Water-Stone, The MacGuffin, and Calyx, among others. In 2017, she was named Best of the Bay Local Poet by Creative Loafing. She is assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, where she is editor-in-chief of Sandhill Review and director of the Sandhill Writers Retreat.