The Zingara Project

Tag: Prairie Schooner

  • Marilyn Monroe by Ellen Saunders

    We applaud, adore and adorn
    the holiday tree in Rockefeller Plaza,
    embellish its natural beauty
    and render it unrecognizable.
    When its brief stint in the starlight
    is over, the man-made magic
    gone, we’ll carry it to place far
    from view. Reluctantly, we’ll return
    to our tired selves, all the while knowing
    that there’s always next year. Another tree
    that once held a winter’s worth of snow
    in its arms. Another star on the horizon.
    Another chance to build up and tear down.
    The possibilities are endless.

    —

    Ellen Saunders’ work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Toronto Quarterly, Calyx, Pearl, Apple Valley Review, among others. Her first chapbook, Masquerad” was published by Long Leaf Press. She is currently working on a second collection.

  • 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.