The Zingara Project

Tag: Rattle

  • Traveling Along the Corpse-roads by Diana Rosen

    The writer submits to a walking meditation, ignoring
    the beauty under her feet, unaware how they crumple
    sun-golden Lion’s Tooth and dandelions, the clover.

    The writer stomps on, blind to the circinated fiddlehead
    budding into a passion of forest green, signaling her
    to connect, tell those tales, those found only in dreams.

    No sweet roses scent the air. Instead, geraniums, marigolds
    release their bitter scent, awakening her to the Lion’s Tooth,
    dandelion, the sweet clover patch that invites honeybees.

    Under the dimming twilight, white daisies fold back petals
    white, warming blankets for a dream-filled black-dark night.
    Blades of grass thick and tight in a unison of lawn lushness

    whisper to the hedges, the hydrangeas, “She is back.”
    The writer sharpens her pencil, reclaims her notebook,
    the eraser. Refreshed, in spite of herself, she begins.

    —

    Diana Rosen has published poetry in RATTLE, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, Poetry Super Highway, and As It Ought to be Magazine, among others. Redbird Chapbooks will publish her forthcoming hybrid of poetry and flash, Love & Irony. To read more of her fiction and nonfiction, please visit www.authory.com/dianarosen

  • Study of an Orange by Diana Rosen

    The basket of fresh-picked oranges
    a nest of hardened pockmarked yolks
    buffed to an acceptable smoothness
    sits docile, waiting, fragrant with
    that sweet acid burst that draws you
    to pull off one stubborn leaf-dotted stem.
    Its spicy spray tickles your nose, rains.
    on your beard, smarts your eyes, still
    you keep tearing away the thick skin,
    scraping off the soft bitter pith
    to expose each plump section
    ready for your lips
    small expectant lips
    hidden under a snowy mustache
    wonderful lips
    that open slightly,
    give me citrus kisses
    my happy tongue
    licks into a smile.

    —

    Diana Rosen has published poetry in RATTLE, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, Poetry Super Highway, As It Ought to be Magazine, among others. Redbird Chapbooks will publish her forthcoming hybrid of poetry and flash, Love & Irony. To read more of her fiction and nonfiction, please visit www.authory.com/dianarosen

  • Running With The Wolves by Bruce McRae

    An hour of joy, an ounce of sorrow.
    This monumental moment, in part and in whole.
    I’m being touched by moonlight, so a little bit mad.
    Moonstruck and nightblind. Gone the way of the wolf.
    I’m lying in a loony half-light and recounting the myths,
    the stories we tell ourselves in order that we might carry on.
    Meaning imbued over coincidence. Memories shorted.
    The past redacted and redressed, so all is calm.
    You can put away those nerve-pills and quack confections.
    You can rest easy. Write a poem. Go whistle.
    A full harvest moon, and you can see into the darkness.
    You can sail that moonbeam over the shallows of paradise.
    Hang tight, my passenger, it’s full on into morning.
    —

    Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are “The So-Called Sonnets” (Silenced Press), “An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy” (Cawing Crow Press), and “Like As If” (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.

    Read these other poems by Bruce on Zingara Poetry Review: “Hinting at Eternity,” “Making Do,” and “Stop the Clock.”

     

     

     

     

  • Rehearsal Hall by Diana Rosen

    She loves hanging out in Wattles Park gazing
    at the lush community garden tilled by urban dwellers
    eager for the primitive feel of dark, moist earth. It’s an anomaly,
    this patch of tilled land among the apartments with character
    and never enough parking of contemporary Hollywood. She
    comes to play her pear wood recorder, mouthpiece worn smooth
    as velvet, sharp edges of note holes melting into her fingers
    as the motets and minuets dance among tomatoes, bok choy,
    mustard greens. She sits among ruins of an edifice with a half column
    there, stone bench here, rain-washed cement floor of barely visible
    hand-painted fleur-de-lis. Stars of the movies, decked out in tuxedoes
    and satin gowns would arrive here in long black limousines,
    like a shiny line of ants, to take their places under the moon applauding
    for performances without the ever present camera. She imagines
    Isadora Duncan dancing across the stage, her signature white silk scarf
    floating behind her or Paderewski, playing sending thunderous notes
    on the ivory keys, soaring up the heavens. Her own music seems so small
    against the memory of these great talents but she continues for the pure
    pleasure it brings her, laughs when the cornstalks undulate as if to say,
    Encore! Dusk falls as she packs up, walks down the sloping dirt path,
    stopping every few trees to crush pine needles in her hands for the burst
    of scent. She detours to re-visit ancient yellow roses struggling to stay
    alive, peers into the dilapidated teahouse where a once-vivid scroll hangs,
    its faded calligraphy a glimpse of disciplined beauty. A rusted brazier
    awaits honored guests. At the bottom the hill, she turns to gaze up,
    wonders what Duncan and Paderewski thought about entertaining the elite
    of the silver screen on summer nights redolent with rose and pine.

    —

    Diana Rosen’s flash fiction and poetry have been published in anthologies and journals including, among others, Kiss Me Goodnight, Altadena Poetry Review, Rattle, Tiferet Journal, Silver Birch Press, Ariel Chart, and Poetic Diversity. She has published thirteen non-fiction books. and teaches free-write classes at senior citizen centers.

     

     

     

  • Of Things Past by Lenny Lianne

    A long time, too long, since we have done — this,
    he said and plopped a fat bottle of Mateus
    and two small paper cups from the bathroom
    onto the table. He took out a maimed box
    of Jolly Time Blast O Butter popcorn
    from a grocery bag, and grinned at her.

    She could tell that this was a campaign
    to coax her to laugh, to forget
    about the future. The distant past
    would be the tactic tonight, the way
    they used to take turns telling
    each other about what had come before

    — about those freakish Christmas gifts
    from screwball aunts, sibling pranks,
    his teen summer by a cirque-cupped pond.
    And after a third refill of new wine,
    they spilled out stories of lapsed romances
    as though, by sharing their own secrets,

    they’d earned whatever alighted afterwards.
    Shag carpets, concrete block with wood
    plank bookcases and black beanbag
    chairs, each had departed by now,
    passing away for better or worse,
    like something familiar that’s lost its way.

         after a line by Lucia Perillo
    —
    Lenny Lianne is the author of four full-length books of poetry. She holds a MFA from George Mason University. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, California Quarterly, Third Wednesday, The Dead Mule of Southern Literature, and others.

  • Stop The Clock by Bruce McRae

    I remember,
    you were pointing a stick
    at the moon.
    It was the day before
    the wolf bit you.
    Near to that incident
    with the toothpick.
    You were with a girl
    who rubbed brass for a living.
    I remember,
    you had a signed edition
    of a box of bags
    and were dating an ex-nun.
    Around the time
    of the break out.
    Sure, and as I recall,
    you were studying wych elm,
    or was it moonwort?
    Either way,
    that was the same summer
    they moved the graveyard
    into the secret forest.
    Remember?
    You had that awful sunburn
    and a lung had collapsed;
    the very same day
    as the mudslide . . .
    Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
    Makes you think
    real hard.
    —

    Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His latest book out now, ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’ is available on Amazon and through Cawing Crow Press, while in September of this year, another book of poems, ‘Like As If’, will be published by Pskis Porch. His poems on video can be viewed on YouTube’s ‘BruceMcRaePoetry’

     

     

     

  • Agreements by Joan Mazza

    I will not collect the hair
    from your brush, nor the nail
    parings you drop in the pail
    to cast a spell. You won’t hear
    whispered commands in your ear
    while you sleep so I can have my way.
    I will not call the old woman
    on the mountain who sells potions
    and instructs on fertility. Though
    she has ways to make rain fall on you
    to restrain you. We’ll keep our vows
    simple, neither of us bowing.
    When we sleep we’ll stay on our sides
    of the bed unless beckoned. I’ll wash your
    dishes, you wash mine, and deep
    we’ll travel until dead.
    Neither of us will iron or be ironed.
    —

    Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, sex therapist, writing coach and seminar leader. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Rattle, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Permafrost, Slipstream, Timber Creek Review, The MacGuffin, Writer’s Digest, The Fourth River, the minnesota review, Personal Journaling, Free Inquiry, and Playgirl. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia. www.JoanMazza.com

    “By reading and writing poetry, I come to terms with my obsessions.”