Zingara Poetry Review: Poetry Picks

Eyesore Prompt

We’re halfway through National Poetry Month with 15 more prompts to go before April 30.

Here’s another to spur your imagination and provide a little motivation. All of the prompts offered this month are meant for inspiration, not rigid rule follwing, so if your writing veers off in unexpected directions, you owe it to your muse to follow.

Choose a location in your community that is considered ugly or an eyesore.

Spend time describing your chosen location in detail using vivid imagery and specific sensory features (sight, touch, taste, smell, sound). Include a metaphor or two to make it extra rich.

Once you have plenty of material and a vivid description, us it as the basis for a poem that conveys the location’s un-attractivenes then transforms it into something beautiful, meaningful, or admirable.

For inspiration, read “Ugliness Came Up” by Kitty Jospé, Zingara Poetry Review

April 15, 2025

The Parable of the Mustard Seed, the Chanteuse and Wild Rice by Libby Bernardine

Can we believe the mustard seed grows eidt piaf
into a large tree producing seed for the birds
to gather—the ever-present sparrows build
their nest, shake down the seeds then born
by wind—many are fed

The French called Edith Piaf la mone piaf,
the Little Sparrow, child raised in poverty
in a brothel, sang her chansons on a street
corner, and once I saw her at Versailles
in New York—who was this voice

in this little frame belting out
Padam Padam Padam, fist clenched
in pounding rhythm, her voice
from across the sea sending
her song of love, La Vie En Rose

Wild rice across the street gracefully
dies, scatters seeds for any of the marsh folk
to feed as it ages—the sparrow
chit, chit whistling over near three red roses
blooming on a bush, three years dormant

I hear the faint sound of a cricket—
I call it to me, the faith of its song
I send it out among the grains.

Libby Bernardin is the author of Stones Ripe for Sowing (2018, Press 53) and two Chapbooks, one The Book of Myth, chosen by Kwame Dawes. Publications have appeared in The Asheville Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Kakalak. She has received awards from the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and the North Carolina Poetry Society.

October 25, 2021

Wind Chimes by Michael Brockley

From your seat in a leather desk chair, you gaze out the window in your writing room. The wind chimes you bought when you moved into this house have lost the clapper during the past winter, and the black enamel has eroded, leaving the silver tubes exposed to the havoc of blizzards and storms. You have not heard the instrument’s melodies since your last German shepherd passed. In mid afternoon a finch alights on the aging deck to perch on a post beside the chimes in order to survey the sky for red-tailed hawks and the terrain for cats before flying into a viburnum. After this year’s finch flutters away, you continue to read from Moby Dick and an anthology of movie poems. Films you would call them, if you were a cineast. For weeks, you’ve wondered if the white whale has been retired from the literary canon as you drew near to the end of the book without any of the ambushes you would expect from Jaws or the squid attacks in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. On your porch the finch skips back into the sunlight, and you notice its feathers shedding February browns in favor of the radiance from an April sunbeam. The bird chirps a song you can hear through closed storm windows. Just such a finch has visited your springs throughout the lives of all the German shepherds you have companioned. Perhaps the absence of the Leviathan in your adventures turns you toward an enigma that might be kindness. Toward a silent conundrum that might even be joy.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Fatal Flaw, Woolgathering Review, and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan. Poems are forthcoming in Flying Island, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and the Indianapolis Anthology.

September 1, 2021

Ambidextrous by Denise Low

Ambidextrous
 

Let me kiss you with my left lip and my right
            open my right labium and the left.
 
Let my left eye solve quadratic equations
            and my right eye parse Picasso.
 
Let me sign the check upside down with my right hand
            rightside up with my left.
 
Let me read traffic signs blindfolded.
            No, just kidding. Let me brake left-footed or right.
 
Let me track two rabbits to the compost pile
            Let me aim left-eyed and shoot right-handed.
 
Let me watch sunrise and offer tobacco smoke.
            Let me offer tobacco smoke at moonrise.

Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, won a Red Mountain Press Award for Shadow Light. Other books include Jackalope and a memoir, The Turtle’s Beating Heart (Univ. of Nebraska). At Haskell Indian Nations Univ. she founded the creative writing program. She teaches for Baker Univ. and lives on Tsuno Mountain. www.deniselow.net

August 13, 2021

Bird, tired bird by Sue Blaustein

         Here’s a gull
missing a chunk of itself.
Not just downy feathers, no…
Long feathers are gone,
        and maybe flesh.
 
Bird, tired bird…
Limping in the street alone,
        using energy
        you can’t spare –
        you bend
and open your beak
to a twig
that has to be food
         but isn’t.
 
I’m sure you can’t fly…you can barely
         walk. Juvenile
plumage, but you won’t grow up.
         Something
         happened.
 
         Juvenile – you’re
limping like an ancient –
         past two cases
of spent bottle rockets.
In deep summer, sweet summer.
The 5^th of July.

Sue Blaustein is the author of In the Field, Autobiography of an Inspector. Her publication credits and bio can be found at http://www.sueblaustein.com. Sue retired from the Milwaukee Health Department in 2016, and is an active volunteer. She blogs for Ex Fabula (“Connecting Milwaukee Through Real Stories”), serves as an interviewer/writer for the “My Life My Story” program at the Zablocki VA Medical Center, and chases insects at the Milwaukee Urban Ecology Center.

July 5, 2021

Here Is The Summer by Ian Powell-Palm

Here Is The Summer 
 
 
with everyone you love inside it. 
No more bodies buried beneath the floorboards. 
 
The ghosts in this place are still able to stand the sight of you. 
Here, people die for good reason. Nothing is ever random. 
 
Your eye is enough. I beg it to swallow all of me.  

 A crashing wave of pink flame, 
my only view, my whole world for a moment 
As the car speeds past the exit. My brother, screaming, 
            Something about freedom as he takes us 80 mph over the hill. 
 
If I told the sky that I had lost my body,
Could I ask for it back?
 
If I gave it to the River, could I become downstream? 
Am I an extension of everything I’ve ever touched? 
 
My love, I want us to live. 
So, I hang up the phone and lock 
my hands inside the basement. 
May they never reach you again. 
 
My love, I you to love anything other than me, 
so I step out of your life, 
and onto the cliff, 
 Back and forth through the car door,
For a decade,
 all of my leaving barely contained,  
measured only by the seasons my body no longer passes through. 
 
I am fully alive 
until I step into a summer 
that is snowed in on all sides.
 
When we make love inside this place 
I am everywhere but here.  

 Never beside you in this bed of thorns.  
 
Never alone with myself.

June 23, 2021

Monkey in a Cup by Javy Awan

I used to mail-order the little monkeys in a cup,
advertised on two-bit comic book back covers,
but the compact box with air holes at the top
didn’t come—I know it was dumb, but I sent cash:
laureled one cents, buffalo nickels, burning-torch dimes,
and Liberty quarters scotch-taped to a card and sealed
in a stamped envelope addressed with best penmanship.

Years and many moves later—they must have tracked
me down like schools their alumni—the delivery arrived:
the miniature hermit monkey snug in his sturdy
live-in cup of Horn & Hardart cafeteria china—
he was a born commuter, a philosopher in a tub.

He’d climb out and walk around wherever set down,
and despite the ad’s fine-print disclaimer about luck,
he had the knack of picking out winners at the track—
dogs, thoroughbreds, and trotters—offsetting expenses.

He’d tell fortunes as a parlor trick, with a deck
of mishmash cards almost as tall, laying out the draw
and discerning the gist with tiny finger to tiny lip
and detective tics of his head. He’d mime the result
with movements precise and unmistakable:
going to the bank, falling in love, fighting a battle,
earning a degree, sailing a ship, and marrying.

Somehow, the single monkey in a cup multiplied—
each Saturday breakfast, the row of mugs had grown,
with furred pates and bright eyes peeking over each brim.

I figure that back in the day a shipment of monkeys
must have escaped and hid out in a post office store room;
they intercepted crates of mugs, and in a few generations,
resumed fulfilling the long-delayed orders,
boyhood to manhood. That would explain it.

—

Javy Awan’s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Solstice, Ghost City Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review; two of his poems were selected for reading at locations on the Improbable Places Poetry Tour in 2019. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

June 2, 2021

We Go, Departing to Dusk by Emily Strauss

Odd that earlier we existed,
felt our own substance before
disappearing to despair,
sometimes gone by nightfall.
We may linger awhile but
the lamp will be snuffed out—

and unless we steel ourselves
to loss, our own and more,
moons will dispel around us
like a vase of flowers with wilted
stems sinking into cloudy water—
then we will lose our grasp.

Surely, this early today, there
remain the skins of opaque ghosts
not yet torn from our ribs
though we may remember the feel
of yesterday’s body extinguished
in our blood, lingering at daylight.

—

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college Over 300 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. The natural world is generally her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

May 23, 2016

sleep(less) night by Nicolette Daskalakis

I woke from a dream I didn’t have
from a sleep I didn’t fall
into,
and I asked you:
What did you dream of?

Nothing.

I dreamt of nothing too.

So as we laid in the silence
of an unconscious night,
I pictured someone
hovering
over us in the dark,
mouth open,
eating dreams
we never had.

—

Nicolette Daskalakis is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and multi-media artist residing in Los Angeles. She received a BA in film production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a minor in Intermedia Arts from the Roski School of Art & Design. Her first book, “because you’re now banging a French girl,” was published in 2015.

May 18, 2016

Infinity Dance by Derek Piotr

When you cut the root,
thick and yellow from the earth,
the root regrows immediately
purple edged and defiant,
fed by underground rivers
and searching endlessly
while April rain nails blooms
sideways to the saturated lawn.

In this you find the infinite,
the mouth of something in
something else, feathers
where there ought not to be,
a moment of dissonance
bringing clarity to the dying
elms, a single crane cutting
the sky with its bowed wings.

—

Derek Piotr is a Poland-born producer and composer based in New England, whose work focuses primarily on the voice. When he has free time, he likes to write. His work with sound has been nominated by the jury for Prix Ars Electronica (2012), and featured on Resonance FM and BBC, and his written works have been published by The Broome Street Review, Hanover Press and The Newtowner.

April 6, 2016

Mouse Heaven Richard King Perkins II

The exterminator has taken away
the small carcasses
and left the smell of Lysol
and coiled snap traps
baited with peanut butter.
Your eyes mourn
those tiny missing lives
wanting there to be
a mouse heaven
free from human dominance.
My laughter makes you wince
and cry even harder.
I hold myself open to you
but even
in my most comforting arms
you cannot find
the slightest hint
of comfort.

—

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

March 23, 2016

Rules for flying by Allyson Whipple

Be early, though you’ll inevitably be late. Don’t forget
to tip whoever drives your cab, your shuttle bus. Tolerate
children. Your passport photo will never be flattering,
because you are not allowed to smile. Bring liquor
or melatonin or antihistamines or whatever sedatives are legal
these days. Sleep to avoid jet lag, or exhaust yourself to avoid
jet lag, or don’t bother with either, because they won’t work.
Gum won’t stop your ears from popping. Say Bless your heart
to flight attendants and ticketing agents and mean it. Think
Bless your heart to TSA and customs agents, but don’t say
anything, because it might come out wrong. Observe
how Earth is only a map when you’re 30,000 feet up. Accept
the loss of control, admit you’re at the mercy
of mechanics, logistics, weather.

—

Allyson Whipple has an M.A. in English and a black belt in Kung Fu. She is currently studying poetry through the UT-El Paso Online MFA Program. Allyson serves as co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar, and is the author of the chapbook We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are. She teaches at Austin Community College.

March 16, 2016

Fugitives by Stephen Mead

It’s always a matter of what’s got to go—–
a name, a family, the life of appliances
just when their warranty’s up,
customary hardships, comfort
secure as the house built by Jack
on four acres of a buried waste dump.

There’s no guarantee here
except for plot twists, many trains
greasing adrenaline in tunnels of glare,
petrol-pungent, urinal-walled—–

Hardly glamorous, only, possibly
the way religion is, any dedicated
frenzy combining chance, will, know-
how’s stupendous calm
depending solely on clues far flung
as refuge—–

junks
wrestling tides in eastern winds,
our eyes, those lanterns, juxtaposed
and wide open for skin, skin
double-shadowed by neon blinking,
sirens, sheets trusting grace then,
then without an alibi
for other warm body lying
in danger of arrest simply
by sleeping,

a loved stranger beside you.

—

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. If you are at all interested and get the time, Google “Stephen Mead Art” for links to his multi-media work.

February 17, 2016

You Will Not Be the Same by Stephen Mead

You brought me cigarettes.
I brought you cough drops.
Wounds were disclosed little
except in momentary darkness
after darkness.
Those shades brought light in
for quite some time.
News has been flapping over:
grey rockets, grainy planes…
Our bodies——palm glades,
our bodies—–sands.
Tent life too occurs: spirit dwellings,
cathedral canteens,
stucco, thatch, bricks.
Our faces peer clear
from such mottled dots.
You send letters I can cherish
like no flag.
I send a hair lock
as if it were a parachute.
In transition, times’ crazy waltz
passes our photos around.
Have you heard?
Mine eyes have seen.
Translate broken languages,
our hybrid tongues,
our multi-racial pasts.
There’s such fertility here,
such peril, and both signify change.
Different you will be and me
I expect too
though the altered love
goes just as deep.

—

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. If you are at all interested and get the time, click on “Stephen Mead Art” for links to his multi-media work.

February 10, 2016

Solitude by Vinita Agrawal

In slumber I am not alone.
Awake, I am.

In a crowd, I am stranded
In solitude, found.

People meet and mix
They have reasons.

My reasons are dead.
I stretch empty from sky to earth.

I am a sliver of light
trapped between closed doors.

Air that cannot be breached
and moulded into a hug.

In myself, I am all that is lost
I am everything that needs to be said.

—

Author of two poetry books – Words Not Spoken and The Longest Pleasure, Vinita is a Mumbai, India based, award winning poet and writer. Her second manuscript was selected for publication by Finishing Line Press, Kentucky, USA. Her poems have appeared in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Open Road Review, Stockholm Literary Review, Poetry Pacific and over a 100 other national and international journals. She was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011, awarded first prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2014, commendation prize in the All India Poetry Competition 2014 and won the 2014 Hour of Writes Contest thrice.

January 20, 2016

Tag: Zingara Poetry Review: Poetry Picks

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: