The Zingara Project

Tag: #ZingaraPoetryReview

  • At Nineteen by John Sierpinski

    On a Monday, July morning, Julian Whittaker
    (at nineteen) works high up on a ladder, cleaning
    fluorescent light fixtures in the English lecture
    hall. He can use the money for the start of the fall
    semester. He wipes dust, and then black soot off
    the white covers. Mike Kessler cleans, too. He

    tells Julian, “I’ve just been released from the county
    psych ward, but I’m okay now. I’m studying
    Mandarin.” To Julian, Mike appears unbalanced,
    the shaky ladder, his exophthalmic eyes, the tick
    of his right cheek. Another student, Richard
    Longwell, has come to dust. He carries a boom

    box the size of a small suitcase. At the sound
    of the manic beat, Julian notices that Mike and Richard
    dust faster. Then Richard declares, “It’s break time!”
    and turns the lights off and the volume up. Distorted
    guitars splay, plugged in to simple chords. To Julian,
    it is too much. He thinks about how he has lost his

    beloved Renee—she has walked away. He feels,
    in the words of Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb.”
    He drowns another soaped rag, wrings it out by touch
    in the dark, and lets the water drip down his pant leg.
    He listens to Mike tell Richard, “Turn that damn box
    down.” Then Mike says, “You know, I had sex with

    one of the other patients.” Richard says, “When I
    dropped acid, last night, my entire body glowed. Just
    think about it, my veins pumped light.” “Look man,
    I don’t want to think about your drug-fueled shit,”
    Mike says. And Julian, he doesn’t say anything at all.

    —

    John Sierpinski studies poetry at the Vest Conservatory for Writers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has recently published in California Quarterly, Curbside Splendor, North Coast Review, and Indiana Voice Journal. He has been nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. He has currently completed a collection.

     

     

  • Nook by Hannah Rousselot

    The closet is small enough
    that when I go in with my book
    my body is compressed on all sides.

    I lean the pillow I brought
    against the thin wood.
    The flashlight makes the shadows
    stronger, but now I can read about

    a girl who escapes and saves the world.

    I have nothing to escape from
    except the toxic cloud
    that my parents created downstairs.

    I have nothing to save except
    my own bloody fingernails, from myself.

    —

    Hannah Rousselot is a queer DC based poet. She has been writing poetry since she could hold a pencil and has always used poems as a way to get in touch with her emotions. She writes poetry about the wounds that are still open, but healing, since her childhood and the death of her first love. Her work has appeared in Voices and Visions magazine, PanoplyZine, and Parentheses Magazine. In addition to writing poetry, Hannah Rousselot is also an elementary school teacher. She teaches a poetry unit every January, and nothing brings her more joy than seeing the amazing poems that children can create.

  • Pachyderm by Toti O’Brien

    What makes baby irresistible
    is candid decrepitude
    held so gracefully.

    Wrinkled and sagged
    a zillion-year-old skin
    stacked on its tiny skeleton

    yet clear of all attitude
    only wisdom
    that of pretending none.

    Little beast, born a centenarian
    but without a lament
    totters by with unsteady majesty.

    Such conspicuous fragility
    grizzled innocence
    in its meek stare.

    Eyes black corals
    buried by timeless oceans
    submerged by rippling sand.

    —

    Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She was born in Rome then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her work has most recently appeared in DIN Magazine, Panoplyzine, Courtship of Wind, and Colorado Boulevard.

     

     

  • White Crow by Yuan Changming

    Perching long in each human heart
    Is a white crow that no one has
    Ever seen, but everyone longs
    To be

    Always ready
    To fly out, hoping to bring back
    A glistening seed or a colorful feather
    As if determined to festoon its nest

    —

    Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart nominations, seven chapbooks, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), Best New PoemsOn Line, Threepenny Review and 1,389 others across 41 countries.

     

  • Night by Jerry Wemple

    Night falls suddenly when the sun declines
    behind these granite hills. The boy sits on
    the river side of the flood wall, his back
    to the town. He smokes a cigarette, counts
    the cars and tractor trucks on the state road
    across the water. Wonders where they’re bound.
    The boy would like a car, some way, any way
    to leave the town, to drive past the farms
    until the hills grow and the woods thicken
    and sit beside the tiny stream that is the start
    of this half-mile wide river. The boy rises,
    heads into town. He walks past the little park,
    a few blocks up Market, enters a tiny hot
    dog restaurant, nods to Old Sam, who started
    the place after the war. Sam knows, fixes
    one with everything, uncaps a blue birch
    from the old dinged metal floor cooler,
    while the boy fingers the lone coin in
    his pocket. Outside the wind rises and shifts.

    —

    Jerry Wemple is the author of three poetry collections: You Can See It from Here (winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award), The Civil War in Baltimore, and The Artemas Poems. His poems and essays have been published in numerous journal and anthologies. He teaches in the creative writing program at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

  • Overheard by Carolyn Martin

    As evening sneaks around
    the house,
    the ironing board and
    kitchen sink gossip about
    your first kiss.
    Inexplicable –
    how they understand
    the weight of soft,
    the intimacy
    of wind-brushed clouds; how,
    in this chartreuse spring,
    you’ll leave behind
    your baseball glove for moony moods
    and un-chewed fingernails; how
    you’ll charge
    summer’s quickenings
    with shattered
    beliefs of black and white.
    Tonight, as the board folds itself
    and the last dish is washed,
    the owl clock hushes
    their surmise.
    If you had overheard, you
    would have entertained
    their slivered truths,
    perhaps cheered their prophecy.

    —

    From English teacher to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and perfect summers. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK including “Stirring,” “CALYX,” “Persimmon Tree,” “How Higher Education Feels,” and “Antiphon.” Her third collection, Thin Places, was released by Kelsay Books in Summer 2017. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penciled “extremely maudlin,” Carolyn is ​still ​amazed she has continued to write.

     

     

  • Three Pleasures by Lola Haskins

    Coffee

    The day you learned to love bitterness,
    you were sure you were grown.

    *

    Flowers

    Older, you set flowers in clear water as if
    with enough kindness, they would not fade.

    *

    Desire

    The din of thousands of wanting cranes
    informs your winter steps. You count

    on them like husbands, every dawn.
    Then one morning, they are gone.

    —

    Lola Haskins’ most recent poetry collection is How Small, Confronting Morning (Jacar, 2016). Her prose work includes an advice book and a book about Florida cemeteries. Among her honors are the Iowa Poetry Prize and two Florida Book Awards. She serves as Honorary Chancellor of the Florida State Poet’s Association.

  • Do Not by Barbara Lawhorn

    Don’t fall in love ever again.
    Maybe, don’t trust yourself.
    Maybe only believe in what is
    tangible. Don’t use similes
    and metaphors so much in speech. Don’t

    let others know what you are thinking. Feeling.
    Doing next. Don’t plan ahead. Don’t plan meals.
    Don’t think. Don’t think the wind rustling the dead
    leaves, still hanging on, is God. Don’t

    expect. Anything. Don’t expect anyone.
    Anyone to make room for you in the homes
    of their lives. Or you for them. Get small. Get quiet.
    Work on disappearing into yourself. Think.
    Think bomb shelter, canned goods, flashlights, and sleeping
    bags. Zip yourself up. Listen. Listen. To the water rising
    in you; all that blood. Be a dead leaf casting away, first on air
    then on water. Use as few words as possible. As necessary.
    You aren’t a tree. Words aren’t branches. Words are icicles.
    Only hang them coldly, where they are really needed. Don’t

    press your body to anything or anyone. Let your body only
    be lodging wherever and whenever you are in the world. Don’t
    talk. Don’t send a telegram to the world; send one to yourself.
    Don’t smile unnecessarily. Set your face. Your skin isn’t Silly
    Putty. Much of the world is unfunny. Don’t

    laugh. What foolishness
    you swam in. How dare you? You wore optimism like a bikini
    that didn’t fit you. Take it off. No one will look at you,
    much less touch you, in your nakedness.

    —

    Barbara Lawhorn is an Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University. She’s into literacy activism, walking her dog, Banjo, running, baking and eating bread, and finding the wild places, within and outside. Her most recent work can be found at The Longleaf Pine, BLYNKT, Nebo: A Literary Magazine, and Naugatuck River Review. Her favorite creative endeavors are her kids, Annaleigh and Jack.

  • Schoolhouse Rock by Alex Stolis

    Three is a Magic Number

    The moon is full. Strike that. The moon is. Strike that.
    There is no moon. There is a motorcade. Motorcycle
    cop in full regalia, an American flag flies stiff in back.
    The hearse is black, the black of silence; the kind that
    crowds out light. Squeeze my hand want to know you
    are still there. I’m having a premonition. Count the cars
    with me: twothreefour, a hawk circles. The moon’s over
    head after all, perched on a branch ready to fly.

    The Shot Heard Round the World

    The jukebox whirs and murmurs to a stop. Lipstick
    law takes over after 2AM. Every cliché ever heard
    gets lined up, ice-watered down, poured into a cup
    along with sawdust and pool chalk. Go ahead suck
    the lime. Lick the salt. Choke on it down. All bets
    are off since the clean slate called it a night. This is
    the land of a-plenty, land of absolute memories.
    Last call is a random, desperate kiss.

    Elementary, My Dear

    The walls are suffocating, shedding their skin.
    We’re not born for permanence. Adam made
    the decision for us. We are destined to die of
    exposure in the presence of love. Beauty: the
    bite of an apple, a flash of white skin, one last
    breath on a pane of glass. Sin: a constituency
    of stars, a cabal of angels shuffling over a pin
    head; a brand new coat of paint.
    —

    Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Recent chapbooks include Justice for all, published by Conversation Paperpress (UK) based on the last words of Texas Death Row inmates. Also, Without Dorothy, There is No Going Home from ELJ Publications. Other releases include an e-chapbook, From an iPod found in Canal Park; Duluth, MN, from Right Hand Pointing and John Berryman is Dead from White Sky e-books. His full length collection, Postcards from the Knife Thrower, was a runner up for the Moon City Poetry Award. His chapbook, Perspectives on a Crime Scene and a full length photo/poetry collection, Pop. 1280 are forthcoming from Grey Borders books.

  • 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.

     

     

     

  • Alternate Life Number Two by Jeanne DeLarm-Neri

    In which girls whose poplin skirts
    stand straight out on stiff crinolines
    point my path up Haystack Mountain
    where I will taste a boy’s tongue.

    Before giving up my name, I scan
    orange leaf trees below, for an outcast
    with my hair. She lurks under that canopy
    where sun fights to ray itself in.

    I mask my face in a journey from hamlet
    to outskirts of cities and their gates.
    Stay in the trees, clad as I am
    in patches of gleaned leather.

    In which I sell or give away belongings:
    wax flowers fit for bisque doll hands.
    Push that box off my shoulder,
    wake up atop a bed of pine needles.

    I am not dead, but playing possum,
    white skin a camouflage for meat
    of mushrooms, rocks that glow in the gloam.
    In which a lean-to serves as my home.

    —

    Jeanne DeLarm-Neri writes from a house built by a ship captain in 1853 in a Connecticut shore town, which she shares with her husband and antique dolls.   Her poems have been published in various journals, one being nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She received an MFA from Fairfield University.

  • Late Freeze, An Interlocking Rubiyat, by Roy Beckemeyer

    Spring rose from sleep too soon, I fear,
    lifted her head into cold, clear
    starlight. Blinked, shuddered, then reaped
    the pain of her mistake. The year

    will always bear the mark, carved deep
    in lore: this spring that frost killed, creeped
    into the buds with ice. Life left
    the trees as if they had been steeped

    in poison. Without fruit, bereft,
    the birds ceased song. Their hearts were cleft.
    Season’s shift should be smooth and deft,
    Instead, we’ve suffered winter’s theft.

    —

    Watch for Roy Beckemeyer’s new book of ekphrastic poems, Amanuensis Angel, coming soon (March 2018) from Spartan Press, Kansas City, MO.

  • Dance in a Drugstore by Anne Whitehouse

    The dark-eyed salesgirl at CVS
    jumped into the toy collection box,
    bobbing like a jack-in-the-box,
    tossing her long, dark, silky hair.

    She jumped out laughing,
    flirting with the salesboy,
    inviting him to dance
    to the background Muzak.

    Under the store’s fluorescent glare,
    they swayed and twirled,
    overcoming the boredom
    of a slow Sunday night
    in a dead-end job,
    in step with an old love song.

    —

    Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Meteor Shower (Dos Madres Press, 2016). She has also written a novel, Fall Love, which is now available in Spanish translation as Amigos y amantes by Compton Press. Recent honors include 2017 Adelaide Literary Award in Fiction, 2016 Songs of Eretz Poetry Prize, 2016 Common Good Books’ Poems of Gratitude Contest, 2016 RhymeOn! Poetry Prize, 2016 F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Poetry Prize. She lives in New York City. www.annewhitehouse.com

     

  • When Freedom Fails Me by Lisa Masé

    Because I have died and been reborn,
    because rarely, I get to glimpse the calm
    that precedes worry,
    I take the beauty way home today.

    Once, I trusted some safety beyond myself
    as my ear pressed against your broad chest
    to hear another steady beat.

    I am left with my own heart
    leaning into a sunflower
    that beams yellow
    from its head of diamond nectar.

    When did it ever go easily?

    Maybe as a baby,
    before my spirit remembered fear
    and started clutching at time’s skirts
    as they swirled
    to let thoughts wrap me
    in their brocade of desires.
    —

    Lisa Masé has been writing poetry since childhood. She teaches poetry workshops for Vermont’s Poem City events, co-facilitates a writing group, and has translated the poetry of writers from Italy, France, and the Dominican Republic. Her chap book, Heart Breaks Open, was published by the Sacred Poetry Contest.

  • Mirror Image by Dilantha Gunawardana

    You look at the glow of the super moon,
    At a flawless circle, epitomizing perfection.

    So was by legend, Cleopatra, and by myth, Helen of Troy.
    We all like to see some beauty in us, outer or inner,

    Like that feeling which sponsors effervescent mirth,
    From a one-way transaction with a roadside beggar,

    Mirrors are ubiquitous; in the bedroom, above the sink,
    On the outside of a car, some hand-held, some hung in the soul.

    All are badgering truth machines, inescapable, almost
    Like the nagging sun during the daylight hours,

    And mirror images are far from idyllic sculptures,
    Only an offering of honesty, of a fine glass-like reality,

    A reflection that you look at, either directly or with tilting pupils,
    In a myriad of deft angles, gazing at a familiar creature,

    Who fails to meet up to your high expectations.
    Still, you graft a tongue-full of flattery,

    Harvesting an eyeful of dishonesty from a mirror’s face,
    Oblivious that deception is like a daffodil,

    A blooming Narcissus.

    Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the ripe age of 32 and now has more than 1700 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry and Ravens Perch, among others. He blogs at – https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/