The Zingara Project

Tag: Poetry Quarterly

  • Depression by Doug Van Hooser

    I fail like a slogan. A frozen can of soda

                that cracks the pop-top, thaws and whispers

                            it’s carbonation. Flat as cold,

    I wander the sidewalks of suburbia,

                look through windows, see the unuttered invitation

                            of furniture. If only there was a message

    in the envelope addressed to me.

                It arrives with no return address.

                            The wind doesn’t yell or even sigh.

    No leaves to shake in the trees.

                A culvert runs under the road,

                            too small to fit through.

    The teeter-totter of chemical imbalance

                won’t shift its weight. Hibernation

                            a dreamless sleep,

    I grant myself custody of my aloneness.

    —

    Doug Van Hooser’s poetry has appeared in Chariton Review, Split Rock Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Poetry Quarterly among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Bending Genres Journal. Doug is a playwright active at Three Cat Productions and Chicago Dramatists Theatre.

  • Like Her by by J.D. Isip

    Thirty-eight, maybe forty boxes—
    how does that divide by nine marriages?
    Old photo albums we don’t look through
    stacked sideways, shut for years—
    A hat box her third husband gave her
    from Italy—where she said he died
    At least to her—stuffed with Christmas cards
    the old 70’s, foil kind—flimsy
    And showy, now frail, like her

    I’ve begged her to dump them, dump them all
    but she protests, she pulls some trick—
    A yellowed picture of my dad in a fading, brown suit
    or my brother’s first card from his father (not mine)—
    I digress. To me, it’s a waste
    like being married nine times

    To hold onto the crumbling pieces of a past
    that rots away in a rented storage space
    Each box as empty as they are full

    Married nine times—unfathomable
    as these old boxes, stuffed, overflowing
    Contents far too daunting, too consuming to explore—
    probably not enough to learn from, or care for
    To me, it’s a waste—I’m not like her—
    I’d throw them away
    Clean up and move on.
    —

    J.D. Isip’s academic writings, poetry, plays, and short stories have appeared (or will appear) in a number of publications including The Louisville Review, Changing English, Revista Aetenea, St. John’s Humanities Review, Teaching American Literature, The Citron Review, Poetry Quarterly, Scholars & Rogues, Mused, and The Copperfield Review. He is a doctoral student in English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.