The Zingara Project

Tag: FutureCycle Press

  • Annual Self-Preservation Scrutinization by M. Kaat Toy

    Checking our revered account balances, we see if last year’s resolutions have been cost effective or has their security been breached by the contorted cycles of our junkie brains that love to rob while renouncing free offerings as too repressive? Though it’s hard to climb the ladder of satisfaction with the tractor treads of military tanks, our logic brains persistently denounce actions unacceptable to their wills such as polishing the auras of all the mystical animals, raising their knavish energy and opening doorways to the higher realms. Because the practical alone is dangerous and the spiritual alone is ineffective, the twin clowns of war and thunder mock our arrogance and our wrath, tossing watermelons down on us from their rainy mountain where the fastidious knights we dispatch to guard the holy grail of the rigid little goals we set for ourselves corrode in the clouds.

    —

    M. Kaat Toy (Katherine Toy Miller) of Taos, New Mexico, has published a prose poem chapbook, In a Cosmic Egg (2012), at Finishing Line Press, a flash fiction book, Disturbed Sleep (2013), at FutureCycle Press, novel selections, short stories, flash fiction, prose poetry, creative nonfiction, journalism, and scholarly work.

  • Stillness by Martin Willits

    How do we still the stillness,
    making it less than a soft whisper of sleep?
    One more day no one can take problems anymore,
    and look at how badly it turned out
    as the sun sighed, going out
    behind the black-purple night sky background.

    How can we make it any more quiet
    than when the sun is a red flood
    disappearing under the weight of the setting
    and the pushing down of night?

    The large orange harvest moon
    sits on the horizon
    like it was a hard wooden park bench.
    It is so close we can see the pockmarks
    from eons of smashing asteroids,
    and we do not know what to say —

    how do we get more silence, less
    talking, less accidental noises
    than that? Less than an oar
    not moving in water, not dripping
    when lifted, not tipping into the row boat
    as it is tied onto a pier, and not
    the soundlessness of the wooden dock —
    how do we get less noise than that?

    Even the moth flaming after touching fire
    makes a subtle noise. Or the cat, padding
    on a thick rug, clawing and sharpening its nails,
    arching before circling into sleep,
    makes a curious noise, one that troubles
    the quiet. No matter how softly we proceed,
    noise follows us, makes sure we know it’s there.

    —

    Martin Willitts Jr has 20 chapbooks including the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017) plus 11 full-length collections including forthcoming full-lengths includes “The Uncertain Lover” (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and “Home Coming Celebration” (FutureCycle Press, 2018).