The Zingara Project

Tag: Paterson Literary Review

  • A Body Found by Will Reger

    The last snow mantle
    drapes your shoulders,
    covers your dark readiness.

    Secretly,
    as I drive past along
    my corridor of labor,
    I love you.

    Secretly,
    white-laced,
    wet and open.

    You are the field
    I will lie down in, to wait.
    Crops will grow up around me.
    They will scrape you bare again,
    leave you bleeding, confused,
    your ditches still unmown,

    and there I will be.

    —

    Will Reger is a founding member of the CU (Champaign-Urbana) Poetry Group (cupoetry.com), has a Ph.D. from UIUC, teaches at Illinois State University in Normal, and has published most recently with Front Porch Review, Chiron Review, and the Paterson Literary Review. His first chapbook is Cruel with Eagles. He is found at https://twitter.com/wmreger — or wandering in the woods playing his flute.

  • Predictable Patterns by Laurinda Lind

    I can’t stay centered on the winter solstice
    even in its most ancient aspect and certainly
    not its spendthrift one but when I was young,
    boxes of attic bulbs determined December

    along with trees that don’t belong inside
    and won’t stay up, but mean it isn’t always
    going to be this dark and cold, we’ll see
    ground again without snow. After years

    of take-apart trees and malevolent demented
    light strings I have failed in the Christmas
    category, either neglecting the tree till
    it shredded to the touch in April and could

    be scattered in the yard over leaves I never
    raked in the fall, or not putting one up at all
    so my daughter would come home from
    college and sigh and put it up herself, and

    once opened all my CDs. Stuck them on
    the branches where they shone silver like
    a Jetsons tree, assuming they would still
    have trees in that century, that the seasons

    will mean something after this terrible time
    where we are now, this dark we are not
    sure will take us through to spring, no
    matter how much tinsel we throw to it.
    —

    Laurinda Lind’s poems are in Another Chicago Magazine, Blue Earth Review, Blueline, Comstock Review, Constellations, Main Street Rag, and Paterson Literary Review; also anthologies Visiting Bob [Dylan] (New Rivers) and AFTERMATH (Radix). In 2018, she won the Keats-Shelley Prize for adult poetry and the New York State Fair poetry competition.

  • The Last Train by Will Reger

    Sister, we are in an ancient place, that last
    station where the living change trains.
    Everyone comes here, tired of living,
    ready to lay it all down, ready to be done,
    or confused how they came here so soon.
    It is you with the transfer ticket, dear, not me.
    After you board I will travel on alone,
    swing back this way some other time.
    Your body jerks and rumbles with shut down.
    The train you need picks up speed.
    Everyone on the platform feels the power
    and starts to gather up their things,
    unaware — no baggage car on this train.
    I would gather you once more if I could.
    Your eyes are two pools of puddle water.
    A last light reflects in each, like hope,
    like the promise of Science or God, or like
    a star falling across the sky, sparking love.

    —

    Will Reger is a founding member of the CU (Champaign-Urbana) Poetry Group (cupoetry.com), has a Ph.D. from UIUC, teaches at Illinois State University in Normal, and has published most recently with Front Porch Review, Chiron Review, and the Paterson Literary Review. His first chapbook is Cruel with Eagles. He is found at https://twitter.com/wmreger — or wandering in the woods playing his flute.