The Zingara Project

Tag: Ploughshares

  • AppleSong by Terry Savoie

    1.

     Succulently sugared Annas tucked in snuggly against a peck
    of blushing Empires who, in turn, are fitted alongside
    Grannies, sharp-tongued, in their tight, tart skins;
    Gravensteins & Northern Spies push forward bright-
    bosomed & rosy-cheeked while Winter Bananas wallow
    in their amber-lemon syrup which will never fully explain
    the glow on the soft skins worn by Golden Russets, odoriferous
    to be certain, brushed over with girlishly cream-coated flesh;
    the Hawkeyes & Pipins & Winesaps, gentlemen from two
    centuries past, so wise, say some, far beyond their age,
    have now turned into the naughtiest, the plumpest slices
    for pie fillings then they are joined by the polished, intoxicating
    Gordons & peck on peck of sprightly Permains thrown in alongside
    a bushel of Black Spurs, their sugary tones so radiantly fulsome, so… 

    2.

    Asleep: in
    their one
    ripe season,
    apples are
    packed in
    tightly &
    tucked
    in straw,
    in crates,
    in the cold
    cellar, safe
    & silent,
    sleeping
    away their
    days un-
    til they’re
    summoned
    to the kitchen up-
    stairs to serve
    the Mistress’s
    sweet purpose.

    —

    Terry Savoie has had more than three hundred and fifty poems published in literary journals over the past three decades.  These include The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review and North American Review as well as recent or forthcoming issues of  American Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review among others.  A selection of poems, Reading Sunday, recently won the Bright Hill Competition to be published Spring 2018.

  • The Last Massacre in My Lonely Notebook by David Spicer

    Solitude isn’t a gate that opens.
     –Norman Dubie

    I volunteered for the nightshift,
    so don’t surprise me, Emma,
    with your tribe of goats.
    I can’t sleep, and if I could,
    I’d dream of standing
    on a snow-topped mountain
    to view the valley below.
    Emma, I need solitude,
    not couriers from Eros
    or a copper cup
    filled with black coffee.
    I’d rather watch reruns
    of Alfalfa and his gang
    chasing geese or wait
    for angels to hold umbrellas
    for me—I doubt if I’d
    leave with them: my soul
    has too many scars,
    and gunshots on the beach
    don’t help. God, I miss
    the lack of terror now.
    Windmills circle in my ears,
    and I need to call a shrink,
    but my throat is a cipher.
    No, I want my black bones
    to heal, ice to drop from the sky
    like frozen tears, and a vase filled
    with scarlet pimpernel adorning
    the window sill. Then I could
    savor a slice of pumpkin pie
    before I write of the last Indian
    massacre in my lonely notebook.

    —

    David Spicer has had poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine,  Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he is scheduled to have From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press) released in the Fall of 2017.