The Zingara Project

Tag: Conclave

  • Columbus Day by Jenny McBride

    Oh Cris Columbus
    How I wish you hadn’t come here.
    Five hundred years of your celebrations
    Have scraped the birds thin
    Drained the fish dry
    Made the rock cry.
    The Vikings sailed back
    When their Vinland grew cold
    But you wrapped your future
    In buffalo robes
    And now I don’t know where to turn
    When I want to go home.

    —

    Jenny McBride’s writing has appeared in SLAB, Common Ground Review, Rappahannock Review, The California Quarterly, Conclave, and other publications. She makes her home in the rainforest of southeast Alaska.

  • Elegy for Shura by Diane G. Martin

    “What is that beautiful game?”
    “It’s not important.
    All those who knew how to play
    are either dead, or have
    long since forgotten.” “Even you?”

    “Especially me.”
    “Is it ivory?” “Only bone.
    The ivory game
    was sold during hard times. Too
    bad, yes, but it matters

    not if no one plays.” “Teach me,
    Shura.” “I do not remember.
    And anyway, what is the point?
    Then with whom shall you play?”
    “I’ll teach someone else.”

    “Did you ever hear the one
    about the old Odessan
    Jew who drove to town…”
    “You can’t divert me so cheaply.
    Now back to the game. Shame

    on you for using such a ruse!
    I expected better,” I grin.
    “You ask too much; I’m dying.
    I’ve no energy
    for whims. So, join me at the sea

    again this year and then we’ll see.”

    —

    Diane G. Martin, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, has published work in numerous literary journals including New London Writers, Vine Leaves Literary Review, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Pentimento, Twisted Vine Leaves, The Examined Life, Wordgathering, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Poor Yorick, Rhino, Conclave, Slipstream, and Stonecoast Review.

  • Stray Cat by Jenny McBride

    Victoria park
    where I was running
    the ducks at water’s edge suddenly running too
    and in the empty space of their wake
    a tattered cat.
    I called him on his hunting
    and he meowed, ran after me
    hungry, lonely, being eaten alive by the city
    but I ran to lose him
    not because I don’t love cats
    or didn’t want to rescue his painful life
    but because I was far from home in a conference hotel.
    Was it the same
    with the men I approached
    when I was young and lonely?
    I always took it personally
    but maybe they were just figures rendered useless
    in the scheme of things
    on the day my heart was warming
    and years later
    they paused to scratch out an excuse.
    —

    Jenny McBride’s writing has appeared in Common Ground Review, Rappahannock Review, The California Quarterly, Conclave, Tidal Echoes, Streetwise, and other publications. She makes her home in the rainforest of southeast Alaska.

  • Internal Exile by Diane G. Martin

              “…we have no hope and yet
              we live in longing.”

                         Inferno, Dante

    I’ve been pressed between the pages
    of a heavy book, a keepsake
    to be rediscovered one fine
    day, yellow, brittle, print-stained—
    a sentimental talisman.

    I’m so close to every line;
    indeed, they are on me engraved.
    Exquisite shapes keep me awake,
    though once lofty, once plain thoughts have
    blurred, have rubbed their meanings away.

    The lack of air is thick with them—
    clouds of locusts on a rampage—
    these words elbowing each other
    These worlds of words, all alien.
    I distrust them–black, banal worn.

    Yet it’s not for nothing I’m named
    Diana.  For now, I bide my
    hours quietly, lie warily
    between famed leaves and string my bow.
    Somehow, I’ll fly to the dark wood.

    —

    Diane G. Martin, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, has published work in numerous literary journals including New London Writers, Vine Leaves Literary Review, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Pentimento, Twisted Vine Leaves, The Examined Life, Wordgathering, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Poor Yorick, Rhino, Conclave, Slipstream, and Stonecoast Review.