April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each week we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. To begin the month, we present John Sibley Williams’ poem “Astray” from ZYZZYVA No. 112:A neighborhood gone missing. Only the torn electrical tape that held it together remains of the cul-de-sac where most of us learned to drive in circles. No bedroom windows left for songbirds to strike each morning or streets made of tin foil or walls of […]
Tag: back issue
“Summer at the Baltic Sea, 1958” by Kelly Cressio-Moeller, ZYZZYVA No. 110, Fall Issue
by Zack Ravas
Kelly Cressio-Moeller is an associate editor at Glass Lyre Press. Her work has previously appeared in ZYZZYVA No. 101. Her poem “Summer at the Baltic Sea, 1958” from ZYZZYVA No. 110 is presented in its entirety below: The sepia-toned man & woman sit together in a Strandkorb an arched canopy pushed back their heads turned toward each other eyes smiling she wears a strapless swimsuit her body leaning forward arms mid-motion as if brushing away sand he wears a striped beach robe one hand wrapped around his raised knee on the footrest the other holding the side of his neck considering her […]
‘Where Things Stand’ by Cynthia White: ZYZZYVA No. 109, Spring Issue
by Cynthia White
Cynthia White is a poet in Santa Cruz. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Nimrod, and Catamaran. You’ll find three of her poems in ZYZZYVA Issue No. 109. In celebration of the Thanksgiving season, we present her poem “Where Things Stand” in its entirety: I, in the doorway, reporting on the dawn, you with your coffee. A small bird is disturbing the quince, its name forgotten. You, lost to a book. The children stand on their own, distant, brilliant stars. Wild iris in a jar stand on the table, the table steadfast on cherry legs. Chairs stand empty, generous. We could be a couple in […]
‘Secular and Inconsolable’ by Noah Blaustein
by Noah Blaustein
My goal was to wake with nothing in my head—it’s nice to begin a day having already achieved. Sunlight on the dead grass of the ski slope. A lone runner works his way up the fire road, a dull throb in my ankle where it twisted on the edge of getting younger, of celebrating my luck in still being able to run. Ralph, my friend, has been trying to convince me for years that the life of an adult is boring but I’ve never aspired to the life of an adult. My wife holds up a diaper, “A pound of […]
‘The Story of a True Artist’ by Dominica Phetteplace: ZYZZYVA No. 105, Winter Issue
by editor
Congratulations to Dominica Phetteplace for her recent win of a 2017 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her writing has been published in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, PANK, and the Los Angeles Review. Phetteplace is also a winner of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from I-Park, the Deming Fund, and the MacDowell Colony. She lives in Berkeley, California.
The following is an excerpt from her short story “The Story of a True Artist,” which you can read in its entirety by purchasing a copy of ZYZZYVA No. 105.
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