The Zingara Project

Tag: Cider Press Review

  • Charming by Laura Cherry

    To get to you I bit the apple
    at its loveliest spot, drawing the poison
    out and into me. I lay in my glass box,
    neither sleeping nor swooning, neither
    half empty nor half full, every nerve
    edged in black like a mourning letter.
    What the doves call song I call grief; but
    I waited.
                     Your charger found me first,
    nosing at my coffin, transformed
    from battle steed to foal by the scent
    of apples. You swung the hinged lid
    slowly: one last moment to fear
    my heart’s desire, all my new kingdom
    in your kiss.
    —
    Laura Cherry is the author of the collection Haunts (Cooper Dillon Books) and the chapbooks Two White Beds (Minerva Rising) and What We Planted (Providence Athenaeum). She co-edited the anthology Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press). Her work has been published in journals including Clementine Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review, Cider Press Review, and Hartskill Review.

  • Agreements by Joan Mazza

    I will not collect the hair
    from your brush, nor the nail
    parings you drop in the pail
    to cast a spell. You won’t hear
    whispered commands in your ear
    while you sleep so I can have my way.
    I will not call the old woman
    on the mountain who sells potions
    and instructs on fertility. Though
    she has ways to make rain fall on you
    to restrain you. We’ll keep our vows
    simple, neither of us bowing.
    When we sleep we’ll stay on our sides
    of the bed unless beckoned. I’ll wash your
    dishes, you wash mine, and deep
    we’ll travel until dead.
    Neither of us will iron or be ironed.
    —

    Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, sex therapist, writing coach and seminar leader. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Rattle, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Permafrost, Slipstream, Timber Creek Review, The MacGuffin, Writer’s Digest, The Fourth River, the minnesota review, Personal Journaling, Free Inquiry, and Playgirl. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia. www.JoanMazza.com

    “By reading and writing poetry, I come to terms with my obsessions.”