Coming Soon(ish)

My forthcoming chapbook “Personal Astronomy” is now available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press. I’d like to think people will enjoy the poems inside, and I’m hoping they’ll like the cover illustration as well. It’s a detail from a star chart by Johann Elert Bode (1747-1826) showing the constellation Andromeda. (That’s her, reclining among the stars.) When I first mentioned "Personal Astronomy". here a couple of months ago, I included a poem that will be in the chapbook, “Constellations.” Poet Dianne Silvestri responded with a poem of her own. (Dianne, by the way, wrote the charming “Summer Treasure” in Joys of the Table..) “Since you invited correspondence,” she wrote me, “I am drawn to send you a poem of mine I recently resurrected which I thought of as I read your ‘Constellations.’”

August Midnight
By Dianne Silvestri

The ranger locked the gate
at sundown, our group inside
to camp at Bluffton Game Preserve.

We unrolled sleeping bags
like planks to bridge the road,
lay wide-eyed to observe

unobstructed midnight sky
of August set to astound us
with one shooting star after another,

all sites on the map overhead
firing meteors in rapid succession.
No one died while asleep

in the middle of that asphalt.
When we awoke the next morning,
in fact, we were all more alive. 

Dianne Silvestri, author of the chapbook Necessary Sentiments, has poems published in Zingara Poetry Review, Poetry South, The Main Street Rag, The Examined Life Journal, The Worcester Review, The Healing Muse, Inscape, THEMA, American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere. A past Pushcart nominee, she is copyeditor of the journal Dermatitis and leads the Morse Poetry Group in Massachusetts.

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Ten Words

Dianne writes that she “resurrected” her poem, which got me thinking of all the old, dead lines I’ve buried in the depths of my computer. Once, for a while, two friends and I played a poetry game involving ten words. We’d take turns each month choosing words at random from whatever book or magazine lay nearby and then we’d each come up with a poem that included at least seven of the words in some form or other. Here’s one I wrote more than a decade ago, drawing from the following words: lantern, drag, dimension, scowl, thaw, reserve, inquiry, docent, copper, and capillary.

Insomnia, 4 AM

The end of the world comes when you’re awake
the dark clamor, the rush of wings,
the taste of copper in your throat,
the jagged wire of dread dragged
through your veins and capillaries.

You don’t get to sleep through this.
The moon may hang a jaunty lantern
outside your window, but you see the scowl
on its face, you grasp the sheer dimension
of the final freeze.

No welcome thaw to come. No cozy sleep.
Not even dreams of sleep.
When the end of the world comes
you will still be awake.

We didn’t come up with great stuff, but it was interesting to see what different directions the same batch of words inspired us to take. Try it and you’ll see.

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From the Recipe Box

A recipe box is a little history not just of dishes you love but also of the people who taught you how to make them. Take dessert: Even though I try to stay away from cakes and pies these days, that wasn’t always the case. Flipping through the recipes in my box brings family members and old friends sweetly to mind. My thanks to the Mississippi University for Women for including this poem in the Fall 2017 issue of Ponder Review:

Their Desserts
By Sally Zakariya

Robin, who couldn’t hide her innocence, maker of poppy
seed cake, unhappy in love, leaning toward the nunnery
last I heard

Jeanne of the freckles and flaming orange hair, never quite
one of our group and remembered mostly for her
carrot cake

Willie, practical Midwesterner who did it all a year ahead
and better, who served flaky almond pastry from her
Dutch forebears

friends and family all filed together in the old recipe box
under Cakes and Cookies along with others -- Mother’s
there of course

no baker, still we relished her peach skillet pie and apple
goodie, sweet memories neatly recorded in her own left-
leaning hand

Nancy, too, big sister who settled into a domesticity I envied
but failed to emulate (I never make her pecan pie but savor
the recipe)

and you, Aunt Betty, your spice cake topped with tangy lemon
sauce deserves a poem of its own, warm and pungent, starting
with the same

simple stuff as all the rest -- flour, butter, sugar, eggs
-- but how various the cooks, how various their desserts

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Man Overboard

I’m always delighted to see new work by poets I know, even if I only know them through publishing. Case in point: Michael H. Levin, whose delicious poem “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” (after the movie by the same name) appeared in Joys of the Table. Levin’s new collection, Man Overboard, is now available for preorder from Finishing Line Press.

“Michael Levin’s poems are a captivating collection of dramatic slices of life netted over the course of decades,” writes one critic, and another adds, “Levin’s poetry circumnavigates the globe like a time-traveling Indiana Jones and sticks a shiny fork deep into earth’s volcanic heart.”

The title poem, which first appeared in Poetica Magazine, tells a tragic story with Levin’s characteristic economy and Imagination

Man Overboard
(C.G.R., d. 2004)

By Michael H. Levin

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Bon Appetit

Don’t forget to “Like” our Joys of the Table Facebook page. And check back often! We’re adding poems and recipes from time to time and would love to hear from you.

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#MeToo Times Two

A few months ago, when the #MeToo revolution was just underway, I was sitting next to a group of young girls at Starbucks one afternoon. I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. The resulting poem has just come out in volume 9, number 1 of Pink Panther Magazine, whose mission is “to give women a voice through the promotion of their art and writing.” Fittingly, the issue went live this month, in honor of International Women’s Day, March 8.

The issue, which is full of strong writing and arresting art, can be downloaded free. My poem’s on page 27:

Afternoon Prayer at Starbucks
By Sally Zakariya

I was sharing, she says in a falsetto little-girl voice.
I was sharing. Sharing what, I wonder as I read
the painful ##MeToo stories women share today.
Sharing innocence, I hope, though these days girls
her age know more about the world..

Maybe 13, on the cusp of growing up, she’s old
enough to want, not old enough to understand..
She tosses her long brown hair, pulls out her phone,
pale green like her vest, like her backpack.ackpack.
Her friends cluster around, chattering, cooing,
sweetly smooth and glowing, ready, all of them.

Good Lord, give them luck, not pain. Give them
kind lovers, caring lovers, good soon-to-be men.
Give them, if you will, confidence and grit,
t the strength to say No--plus wit and love to share. 

Thanks, Pink Panther. And thanks also to the Moving Words program, a yearly competition sponsored by Arlington Transit . Winning poems are displayed on placards inside Arlington, VA, buses April through September. This year’s theme was Ripped from the Headlines, and one of the winners was my friend Eric Forsbergh. Here’s his winning poem:

#MeToo--A Father Responds
By Eric Forsbergh

Some hands grab for dirty work, up close.
So my daughter's pit bull runs with her at dawn.
My wind-worn wings can't span the sky.
For her sake, I want to be what's strange and terrible.
Osiris' black jackal would intercede. His job?
To drag the corpse of lust's assumptions underground.
To weigh its shriveled heart.
But could I recognize deceit seeping from the pores?
Maybe not. Pit bulls possess a better sense of smell.  

Lucky daughter, I think.

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Bon Appetit

Don’t forget to “Like” our Joys of the Table Facebook page. And check back often! We’re adding poems and recipes from time to time and would love to hear from you.

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Look to the Stars

Funny how you get something in your head and can’t seem to shake it. Call it a brain worm if you will. For the last year or so, I’ve been seeing stars … and writing about them. Along with eclipses, phases of the moon, and other celestial matters. Many of these poems are being published in Personal Astronomy, a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Meanwhile, here’s one that appeared in issue 37 of Existere, a journal of arts and literature from Canada:

I know night’s huntsman Orion
with his bright belt and sword
and the Dipper pointing North
but the others are just names
scattered among the stars.

And oh so many stars—
 I never knew how many
until we left the city lights
and drove up the mountain.

We stood amazed like the old Greeks
dwarfed by the enormity of night.

How did they find order in that cloud
of radiance, that vast crowd of stars?

It’s not how but why that matters—
to name what they could not know
to explain the inexplicable
to feel at home in the universe.

Friends showed me Cassiopeia
and the two bears, or tried to
but I was lost in the light
looking to fix my own patterns
to find my own comfort
in constellations. 

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Look to the Snow

Our friend Mel Goldberg, who contributed to Joys of the Table, is a master of haiku as well as other poetry forms, novels, and short stories. He’s just come out with his third book of haiku: The Weight of Snowflakes, published by Red Moon Press. On a chilly February day, I’m taken with this two-parter from the new book:  

          frosty morning
          where does
          sky begin

my body withers
cherry blossoms
in February 

Congratulations, Mel … and keep on writing!

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Like Food?

Like poems about food? Then maybe you’d like the new Facebook page for Joys of the Table, our popular anthology of culinary verse. In fact, we invite you to visit the page and “Like” it. Please add your comments and ideas – we’d love to hear from you. And tell your favorite cook, who might find inspiration in the poems and recipes that make up the anthology. One of our favorites: pavlovas with berry topping, a lush dessert whose recipe accompanies “Berries,” by Virginia poet Eric Forsbergh. “Red raspberries lie velvet in the mouth / but smaller than your kiss …” Can’t you just taste them?

The Great Outdoors

Some of my favorite poems come to me when I’m outside, walking in the woods, lazing in the backyard, or just watching the birds swoop and swirl outside my window. And I’m obviously not alone. A stunning new book, In Plein Air, celebrates, as its subtitle puts it, “poems and drawings of the natural world.” Edited by Arlyn Miller and Susan Gundlach and published by Poetic License Press, the book is beautifully produced in a limited edition and features 22 graphite illustrations hand drawn expressly for the anthology. Each of the book’s 52 poems was written not just about the outdoors but in the outdoors.

My contribution came from a fall afternoon in Memphis. I’d flown down to fetch and carry for my sister, who’d just had a hip replacement. I’d run a few errands for her and was sitting outside on the patio while she napped in her bedroom. The air was bright, the leaves were just thinking about turning, and the world seemed perfect. Here’s what I wrote:

To My Sister, Recovering
By Sally Zakariya

I want to bring the outside in for you
but earth and sky would crowd your narrow
room, so I can only promise

the tall oak that shades your window
the red maple with its burnished leaves
the pine that stands behind the garden.

I promise rainbow birches
and paper birch, bark
curling off in broadside rolls.

I promise aspen, ash and elm – an autumn’s worth
of roots, trunks, and boughs to shelter you until you leave
your room to join me once again here outside.

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Like Food?

Like poems about food? Then maybe you’d like the new Facebook page for Joys of the Table, our popular anthology of culinary verse. In fact, we invite you to visit the page and “Like” it. Please add your comments and ideas – we’d love to hear from you. And tell your favorite cook, who might find inspiration in the poems and recipes that make up the anthology. One of our favorites: pavlovas with berry topping, a lush dessert whose recipe accompanies “Berries,” by Virginia poet Eric Forsbergh. “Red raspberries lie velvet in the mouth / but smaller than your kiss …” Can’t you just taste them?

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Honorables, Boobies, and Other Prizes

It’s been a while since one of my poems won first prize in a contest. In fact, I’ve been pretty much striking out lately. Second honorable mention? That’s a booby prize by any other name, right? Third prize? What if only three poems were entered in the contest? Now, as prize season heats up, I’m wondering what’s the use. Poets & Writers magazine maintains an online database of contests, grants, and awards, and I even shelled out a few bucks for their PDF publication “Guide to Writing Contests” in hopes of learning the secret handshakes that will put me ahead of the crowd

No such luck. One problem, and this is my own fault, is that I put so much effort into submitting for publication that when the time comes to enter a contest, most of my best pieces are already spoken for. But the real problem might well be that my poetry just isn’t good enough. My fault entirely, of course, and the only remedy I can think of is to just keep trying.

Good luck with your own contest entries (unless, of course, they push mine down into the booby prize category).

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A Poetic Cop

Richard Eric Johnson, one of the members of my monthly poetry group, is a retired street cop and Army veteran who served in Viet Nam and West Berlin. And wrote and wrote about it. Eric’s Memoir Poetic of a Naked Cop resonates with passion and reflection, with caustic observation and take-no-prisoners narration of the horrors of war and the tragedies of the street. Here’s one of his poems that stood out for me:

Missing in Action
By Richard Eric Johnson

Their politicians
Our politicians
Got us there

Many the ceremonies
With taps and folded flags and rifle salutes
Many the ashes flung into the winds
Or tossed upon the seas

The politicians
Talked and talked
Mostly lied

Too many soldiers just disappeared
Not a single piece      of remaining flesh

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Another Poem about Age

It turns out that when you’re 75, you’re not so young anymore. Who knew? I expect it hits most of us as a shock. Inside, 40 or 45. In the mirror, well .… In short, I’ve been writing poems lately that might be considered somewhat elegiac. Here’s one of them, which appeared recently in the idiosyncratically named Spank the Carp online journal.

Suit
By Sally Zakariya

Age is a heavy suit.
Its threads and buttons
snare you, weigh you down,
until at last you say Enough
and lie down where the suitt
has led you.

You may think you can
cast off the suit, but no—
it cannot be removed, piece
by piece or all at once.

A Romanian singer sang
of the suit. A Swedish poet
wrote of the tailor who takes
your measurements.

What can I add that has not
been said and said better
except perhaps that the suit
is deceptively light
when you first put it on.

Thanks to my husband the Romania-phile for the song, which he played for me on a scratchy record. (Remember those?) As for the Swedish poet, that, of course, is the wonderful Tomas Transtromer, whose poem “Black Postcards” concludes with this stanza:

In the middle of life it happens that death comes
and takes your measurements. This visit
is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit is
                                 sewn in the silence.

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Poem Prompts from John Ashbery

In September we lost another leading poet when John Ashbery died, just a few months after his 90th birthday. For that occasion, Literary Hub had invited 90 of the poet’s friends, collaborators, and admirers to pick a favorite line from his works and write about it in no more than 90 words. The result was 90 Lines for John Ashbery's 90th Birthday, reposted after his death.

I borrowed one of the lines as the epigraph of a poem of my own, “Much to Tell,” which is currently going the submission rounds. Here are a few other lines, plus the names of the poems they’re taken from. Any one of these lines (or the other 82, for that matter) might prompt a new poem:

• That there is so much to tell now, really now. (“As We Know”)
• And the face / Resembles yours, the one reflected in the water. (“Summer”)
• No matter how you / twist it, / life stays frozen in the headlights. (“Wakefulness”)
• Ask a hog what is happening. Go on. Ask him. (“Grand Galop”) • Something shimmers; something is hushed up. (“This Room”)
• Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted. (“Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror”)
• But you are too preoccupied / By the secret smudge in the back of your soul. (“Just Walking Around”)
• It was always November there. (“The Chateau Hardware”)

As for me, I’m pondering what might be happening to that hog.

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Speak, Memory

One of the rewards of putting together a poetry anthology is the rich network of writers the collection creates. As I was gathering poems, quotations, and cover photos for Joys of the Table, I sometimes imagined all the contributors exchanging verses over supper in a huge dining hall. It never happened, of course. But next best is hearing from them, especially with good news. Judith Waller Carroll, whose poem “Lemon Bread” appeared (along with a yummy recipe) in Joys, recently shared some really exciting news: her first full-length collection, What You Saw and Still Remember, will be released in January by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company. As reviewer Andrea Hollander says of Carroll’s poems, “Her precise images take hold and settle until the poem’s close, when they stab and sizzle. … Carroll’s finely wrought poems seize our own hearts and do not let go.” I couldn’t agree more. Here’s a moving piece from the book, which is available for pre-order:

My Father’s Blue Sweater
By Judith Waller Carroll

He hasn’t been alive for over twenty years
but suddenly, here he is in this room,
smelling of Marlboros and mints,
wearing that blue cardigan,
faded and soft, slightly frayed at the cuffs,
the one I brought home after his funeral
and wore for weeks without washing,
not wanting to lose the scent.
He is reeled back on his heels
reciting Emerson by heart,
dark eyes wide, unruly eyebrows raised,
long fingers outstretched, smoothing the air.

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Up from the Tropics

I was delighted when my poem “Theory of Omission” was accepted for publication in the 2017 Bacopa Literary Review, an annual international print journal published by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, Florida. I was even more delighted when my copy arrived. The journal overflows with thoughtful writing and is handsomely produced. (By the way, it turns out bacopa is a genus of aquatic plants that grow in tropical and subtropical areas like Florida.)

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Acquainted with Grief

“Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.” That’s what Itzhak Perlman is said to have told a Lincoln Center audience when one of the strings on his violin suddenly broke. Perlman continued his concert, minus a string. In her new chapbook, Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, poet Jacqueline Jules explores the aftermath of loss, finding music, as one reviewer says, in “our crippled instruments.” The 2016 winner of the Evening Street Press Helen Kay Award, the chapbook contains poems that are stunning, moving, powerful. Here’s one example:

Avocado Secret
By Jacqueline Jules

When the widow wrote
how her husband
once said she was like
a perfectly ripe avocado,
I wanted to rush right out
and buy one. Examine
its tough exterior,
creamy innards,
solid core.

Learn its secret.

At your bedside, I was
best described as a banana.
A fruit turning brown
and mushy too quickly.

Just like an avocado
when sliced too late.

Except I had no pit
deep inside, stopping
the knife.