Volume 39, Issue 1
editorial staff
readers
6AM: birdsong at dawn by Billy Renkl
Heather Hawk
If my husband had died that spring day, I would’ve mourned a better man. It’s been over a decade and a divorce since, and I haven’t seen ramps until now. I dunk each one into cold water, watch the liquid turn muddy. Ease the thin skin toward the rootlet and slide it off the white bulb. I chop the green leaves to make pesto, set aside the bulbs for pickling. Place the rootlets in a pile to return to the soil later.
We were seven years into our marriage when I found out about the affair. On lunch waiting for my order, my office on the floor above, the man in front of me turned. Recognition passing over his face, he introduced himself: the boyfriend of my husband’s classmate. He began consoling me. No idea what he meant, my face went blank. Confused, he said, “You know they’re sleeping together, right?”
Someone yelled from the other side of the salad bar, and I turned to see Forrest’s classmate running at us. The lunch crowd formed a circle, boyfriend shouting, “She didn’t know!,” punctuated by her equally repetitive, “No!”
READ MORE>Callie Jennings
I
There will come a day,
trust me on this,
when you text your housemate-enemy-crush
to see if ze could bike by Star after hir shift
to grab some extra chips and mixers,
and no part of you plans what you’ll journal
if ze’s struck and killed on that half mile.
II
There will come a day
when you can half-smile at unexpected fireworks
and unfamiliar men, when you see an empty
stroller as just the thing it is, when you hold
your keys like you would hold a dandelion,
when unsurprising words for death are peacefully,
it was her time, and in their sleep, when knocking
wood’s a charming, dying quirk of grandmothers.
III
There will come a day,
I promise you, I promise you, I promise you there will,
when the Council of Grandmothers’ grandmothers knock
and you look through the peephole, and right at the peephole
is the fiercest crone eye of the savoriest brown.
So you put on the kettle, pull out the spare blankets,
while the softest gran coos at your cat, and the others
dismantle your faucets and cure the slow leaks. Each
takes her moment to tell you you’re quick enough,
and beautiful and good enough, such a catch,
and this day that’s come’s the day you can believe them.
And each holds your hand in her petals of hands
and kisses it. ‘Til your skin’s threadbare with kisses.
IV
There will come a day
when you wake to find a trumpet on your lips,
the junky crumpled trumpet of your threadbare desperate longing,
and you woke because you blew it, and a shining trash city
descends from the heavens on tag-sale rockets, landing rough
astride the highways, just where no one wanted
a city of your garbage in a grass-stained gown, and the city’s nickname
is your seventh-grade nickname,
and you take every interview, upright and unafraid.
V
There will come a day
when you’re fearlessly surfing hot mile-up winds
on a skyboard tied to a skeleton eagle—
he’s not dead, just wicked metal—
and you (and your unfeathered friend) wear nothing
but your helmet and your knee pads—
it’s not a dream, you’ve graduated, you have
your usual teeth, you’re only pregnant if you want,
there are no lines to know, but yeah, you’re naked—
as if it’s the simplest thing to be naked
when your body completely belongs to you,
when you’ve made it yourself
with your self-made hands,
with the effort of a macaroni necklace.
And the eagle, who you love, sweeps you over the ocean,
wipes tears from your cheeks with one soft bone talon,
and the ocean is heavy with whales again,
and the whales are heavy with whaleness again,
and the earth is heavy with ice at the poles,
no part of it heavy with pain any more.
VI
There will come a day
with only daylight
coming down.
VII
There will come a day again. A day like nothing happened.
And if a day won’t come, maybe a minute will?
And if a minute won’t, then come good ghosts,
come ancestors’ real names and yesterday’s perfume,
come time-traveler’s magic trick
you play on the child of you,
over and over, laughing and laughing,
trick after laugh after trick ‘til she trusts you
more than anyone—you who she became—laughing
as she toddles toward your frothing, wailing portal
to some sweeter timeline where she might grow up okay,
this child of you, this small laughing child. You repeat:
Look, look at what I’m holding!
Look at what’s about to vanish!
Bryn Agnew
Velo was already late for work. Still she didn’t hurry. No reason to. There was never a reason to. She ran her claws through the feathers that sprouted from her leathery flesh and iridescent scales, trying to straighten them and failing as ever. They’re growing darker, her mother would’ve said, had she been there, had she not been in the Gorge that day. Meteors never knew when to leave well enough the fuck alone.
She brushed her teeth and flossed out the lingering strands of chicken meat stuck between them. She obsessed over her teeth, long and sharp and pale as the winter. Rexy always said she had the best smile. Her cell phone buzzed by the sink, nearly shaking into the bowl.
Rexy (Sexy): you comin in today
Right on time, Velo said in the mirror, wiping a bit of frothed toothpaste from the corner of her mouth. Damn feathers won’t lay back.
READ MORE>
Billy Renkl grew up in Birmingham, AL. He attended Auburn University (illustration and graphic design) and the University of South Carolina (drawing); he now teaches resolutely analog media at Austin Peay State University. Renkl’s work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, including shows in Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Cincinnati, and Berlin, Germany. He is the illustrator of The Comfort of Crows and Late Migrations, both by Margaret Renkl, and When You Breathe by Diana Farid, among other projects.
6AM: birdsong at dawn by Billy Renkl
https://billyrenkl.com/ https://www.instagram.com/billyrenkl/news & events
contests
Zone 3 Press sponsors two book competitions: The Zone 3 Press First Book Award in Poetry and The Zone 3 Press Creative Nonfiction Book Award. Winners receive $1,000 and publication of their book, as well as an invitation to give a joint reading at Austin Peay State University with the contest judge.
Zone 3 Press publications are made available from the Zone 3 Store and your favorite booksellers.
Heather Hawk
Callie Jennings
I
There will come a day,
trust me on this,
when you text your housemate-enemy-crush
to see if ze could bike by Star after hir shift
to grab some extra chips and mixers,
and no part of you plans what you’ll journal
if ze’s struck and killed on that half mile.
II
There will come a day
when you can half-smile at unexpected fireworks
and unfamiliar men, when you see an empty
stroller as just the thing it is, when you hold
your keys like you would hold a dandelion,
when unsurprising words for death are peacefully,
it was her time, and in their sleep, when knocking
wood’s a charming, dying quirk of grandmothers.
III
There will come a day,
I promise you, I promise you, I promise you there will,
when the Council of Grandmothers’ grandmothers knock
and you look through the peephole, and right at the peephole
is the fiercest crone eye of the savoriest brown.
So you put on the kettle, pull out the spare blankets,
while the softest gran coos at your cat, and the others
dismantle your faucets and cure the slow leaks. Each
takes her moment to tell you you’re quick enough,
and beautiful and good enough, such a catch,
and this day that’s come’s the day you can believe them.
And each holds your hand in her petals of hands
and kisses it. ‘Til your skin’s threadbare with kisses.
IV
There will come a day
when you wake to find a trumpet on your lips,
the junky crumpled trumpet of your threadbare desperate longing,
and you woke because you blew it, and a shining trash city
descends from the heavens on tag-sale rockets, landing rough
astride the highways, just where no one wanted
a city of your garbage in a grass-stained gown, and the city’s nickname
is your seventh-grade nickname,
and you take every interview, upright and unafraid.
V
There will come a day
when you’re fearlessly surfing hot mile-up winds
on a skyboard tied to a skeleton eagle—
he’s not dead, just wicked metal—
and you (and your unfeathered friend) wear nothing
but your helmet and your knee pads—
it’s not a dream, you’ve graduated, you have
your usual teeth, you’re only pregnant if you want,
there are no lines to know, but yeah, you’re naked—
as if it’s the simplest thing to be naked
when your body completely belongs to you,
when you’ve made it yourself
with your self-made hands,
with the effort of a macaroni necklace.
And the eagle, who you love, sweeps you over the ocean,
wipes tears from your cheeks with one soft bone talon,
and the ocean is heavy with whales again,
and the whales are heavy with whaleness again,
and the earth is heavy with ice at the poles,
no part of it heavy with pain any more.
VI
There will come a day
with only daylight
coming down.
VII
There will come a day again. A day like nothing happened.
And if a day won’t come, maybe a minute will?
And if a minute won’t, then come good ghosts,
come ancestors’ real names and yesterday’s perfume,
come time-traveler’s magic trick
you play on the child of you,
over and over, laughing and laughing,
trick after laugh after trick ‘til she trusts you
more than anyone—you who she became—laughing
as she toddles toward your frothing, wailing portal
to some sweeter timeline where she might grow up okay,
this child of you, this small laughing child. You repeat:
Look, look at what I’m holding!
Look at what’s about to vanish!
Billy Renkl grew up in Birmingham, AL. He attended Auburn University (illustration and graphic design) and the University of South Carolina (drawing); he now teaches resolutely analog media at Austin Peay State University. Renkl’s work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, including shows in Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Cincinnati, and Berlin, Germany. He is the illustrator of The Comfort of Crows and Late Migrations, both by Margaret Renkl, and When You Breathe by Diana Farid, among other projects.
6AM: birdsong at dawn by Billy Renkl
https://billyrenkl.com/ https://www.instagram.com/billyrenkl/
