The Zingara Project

Tag: Slipstream

  • Emily Dickinson May Be Weary by Rikki Santer

    of surviving as a ventriloquist Sphinx
    for novelists, filmmakers, memelords
    —& poets like me.  Spectrographic
    erasures bloom with threadbare
    secrets—Snapchat daguerreotypes
    in 3D flurries of foxglove crowns—
    posters & t-shirts dwell in too much
    possibility, while her jasmine tea blend
    boasts to rival sunset in a cup.
    How fresh can brandy black cake
    taste in the rewind of how-to-videos
    or namesake ice cream flavors prevail
    in the melting? Like her herbarium,
    collected & pressed dry—Emily’s
    riddles may tire—rickety dialogue
    slanting between spirit & dust.

    Rikki Santer’s work has appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, Slab, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Slipstream, Midwest Review and The Main Street Rag. Her seventh poetry collection, In Pearl Broth, was published this past spring by Stubborn Mule Press.

  • The Lark Ascended by Wayne Lee

    –for Mica and Annie

    First Mother’s Day without her
    and you are pulled in two, toward the open arms
    of your thirsty girls and that blue expanse of sky.

    Flute song on the radio, evanescent as breath.

    Once there was a lark, and speckled eggs,
    and fledglings testing their wings. Now they fly
    in time to that most ephemeral of melodies.

    —

    Wayne Lee (wayneleepoet.com) lives in Santa Fe, NM. Lee’s poems have appeared in Pontoon, Tupelo Press, Slipstream and other journals and anthologies. He was awarded the 2012 Fischer Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and three Best of the Net Awards.

     

  • Elegy for Shura by Diane G. Martin

    “What is that beautiful game?”
    “It’s not important.
    All those who knew how to play
    are either dead, or have
    long since forgotten.” “Even you?”

    “Especially me.”
    “Is it ivory?” “Only bone.
    The ivory game
    was sold during hard times. Too
    bad, yes, but it matters

    not if no one plays.” “Teach me,
    Shura.” “I do not remember.
    And anyway, what is the point?
    Then with whom shall you play?”
    “I’ll teach someone else.”

    “Did you ever hear the one
    about the old Odessan
    Jew who drove to town…”
    “You can’t divert me so cheaply.
    Now back to the game. Shame

    on you for using such a ruse!
    I expected better,” I grin.
    “You ask too much; I’m dying.
    I’ve no energy
    for whims. So, join me at the sea

    again this year and then we’ll see.”

    —

    Diane G. Martin, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, has published work in numerous literary journals including New London Writers, Vine Leaves Literary Review, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Pentimento, Twisted Vine Leaves, The Examined Life, Wordgathering, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Poor Yorick, Rhino, Conclave, Slipstream, and Stonecoast Review.

  • Internal Exile by Diane G. Martin

              “…we have no hope and yet
              we live in longing.”

                         Inferno, Dante

    I’ve been pressed between the pages
    of a heavy book, a keepsake
    to be rediscovered one fine
    day, yellow, brittle, print-stained—
    a sentimental talisman.

    I’m so close to every line;
    indeed, they are on me engraved.
    Exquisite shapes keep me awake,
    though once lofty, once plain thoughts have
    blurred, have rubbed their meanings away.

    The lack of air is thick with them—
    clouds of locusts on a rampage—
    these words elbowing each other
    These worlds of words, all alien.
    I distrust them–black, banal worn.

    Yet it’s not for nothing I’m named
    Diana.  For now, I bide my
    hours quietly, lie warily
    between famed leaves and string my bow.
    Somehow, I’ll fly to the dark wood.

    —

    Diane G. Martin, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, has published work in numerous literary journals including New London Writers, Vine Leaves Literary Review, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Pentimento, Twisted Vine Leaves, The Examined Life, Wordgathering, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Poor Yorick, Rhino, Conclave, Slipstream, and Stonecoast Review.

     

     

  • Seeing a Picture of 2 Guys I Knew 40 Years Ago by Jeanne DeLarm-Neri

    I knew them like fluid,
    like we were all connected,
    linked by our roaming molecules,
    like we shared the same skin cells,
    bumped arm to arm in sparks.
    Like cigarettes lit, glowed, burned,
    light one with the suck of the other.
    You could smoke in the diner then,
    and at night we sat in a bar
    which burned down last year.
    Drinks included crème de menthe.
    Its sweet child body slipped down cool
    and came up hot and undigested,
    baby puke, no bits of stomach lining,
    no pieces of the pulmonary system.
    Though as I inspect the picture of these two,
    slender, hair to the shoulders,
    dressed in chinos and moccasins,
    one smiling under a mustache
    and the other worried, keys in hand,
    I believe that a cardiologist
    may detect a nick or two
    missing from my aorta—
    pieces of me left behind
    on an Ohio lawn, should a machine
    be invented that could measure
    the weight of a moment lost.

    —

    Though Jeanne DeLarm-Neri has written poetry and stories for her entire life, she also earns a living in other fields, particularly as a bookkeeper at a private school, and as a vendor of antiques. Her poems and short fiction have been published in two anthologies (In Gilded Frame 2013 and Poems Of The Super-Moon, 2015), and several literary journals, one of which, Slipstream, nominated a poem for the Pushcart Prize. In 2014 and 2015 she was a contributor at the  Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She’s currently working on a book of poems and a novel.

  • 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.”