The Zingara Project

Tag: Emily Dickinson

  • Emily Dickinson Duet of Original Poems by Charles Weld

    Emily Dickinson Duet of Original Poems by Charles Weld

    Both poems below contain lines from Emily Dickinson and are about birds. So, a little nod to the “Collect, Remix, Repeat” prompt of April 11, but more in line with the “Not the Kind You Flip” prompt of April 26. I’ve been writing single-rhyme poems with Emily lines for about a year, but the bird subject returned when our spring migrants returned in April and May.

    Duet with Emily about White-throated Sparrows

    They stop in our yard for a week or two
    late April, early May—passing through
    fast on their way north to nest. A few
    blue notes this year, the only clue,
    the minor third repeated, no bird in view—
    a single term of cautious melody—
    sounding tired after weeks of migratory
    travel from Georgia, Florida—some southern vicinity.
    Yankee listeners like Emily and family
    heard the bird say, “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody,”
    a moniker to tame strangeness with familiarity,
    and ease it into a place among the certainties.
    Unordered flux, bordering the realm of taboo,
    called out for intervention. Measure, name, subdue.
    Duet with Emily at Dawn

    Birds, a Summer morning Before the Quick of Day
    start in our yard with robins who arpeggio away
    in the darkness before a cardinal joins the melee.
    An alarm sounds from a jay
    or crow—scolds, both wanting their say.
    Then every bird is bold to go on record and forté
    amps up to fortissimo in a wild array
    of tunings. By 7—I’m surprised—the heyday
    is over. Dawn’s promise begins to decay.
    The sun is up, and things weigh
    in, each with its own gravity. Some days I say yea,
    some nay to unremitting Hope—active always
    Yet never wearing out—words from the sensei
    who studied life deeply, but stayed outside its fray.

    Charles Weld’s poems have been collected in two chapbooks, Country I Would Settle In (Pudding House, 2004) and Who Cooks For You? (Kattywompus, 2012.) A full-length collection, Seringo, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. A partially-retired administrator for a non-profit agency serving the mental health needs of children and youth, he lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

  • XLV As imperceptibly as grief

    XLV As imperceptibly as grief

    Emily Dickinson

    As imperceptibly as grief
    The summer lapsed away,--
    Too imperceptible, at last, 
    To seem like perfody. 

    A quietness distilled,
    As twilight long begun, 
    Or Nature, spending with herself
    Sequestered afternoon.

    The dusk drew earlier in,
    The morning foreign shone,--
    A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
    As guest who would be gone.

    And thus, without a wing,
    Or service of a keel,
    Our summer made her light escape
    Into the beautiful.

  • Emily Dickinson May Be Weary by Rikki Santer

    of surviving as a ventriloquist Sphinx
    for novelists, filmmakers, memelords
    —& poets like me.  Spectrographic
    erasures bloom with threadbare
    secrets—Snapchat daguerreotypes
    in 3D flurries of foxglove crowns—
    posters & t-shirts dwell in too much
    possibility, while her jasmine tea blend
    boasts to rival sunset in a cup.
    How fresh can brandy black cake
    taste in the rewind of how-to-videos
    or namesake ice cream flavors prevail
    in the melting? Like her herbarium,
    collected & pressed dry—Emily’s
    riddles may tire—rickety dialogue
    slanting between spirit & dust.

    Rikki Santer’s work has appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, Slab, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Slipstream, Midwest Review and The Main Street Rag. Her seventh poetry collection, In Pearl Broth, was published this past spring by Stubborn Mule Press.