Volume 32, Issue 1
editorial staff
readers
POETRY Albert Abonado • Jessica Guzman Alderman • William Bonfiglio • Lisa Charnock • Steven Cramer • Samantha Leigh Futhey • Jennifer Givhan • Alyssa Jewell • Julie Swarstad Johnson • Julia Levine • Nancy Chen Long • Sarah Fawn Montgomery • Rachel Morgan • Jennifer Moss • Ösel Jessica Plante • Mary Ann Samyn • Brandon Thurman FICTION Joe Baumann • Brian J. Fendrick • Yuly Restrepo • Richard Spilman • A.A. Weiss NONFICTION Karen Babine • Dan Beachy-Quick • James M. Chesbro • Elizabeth Horneber • Mark Irwin • Charlotte Pence • Kari Putterman • Scott Loring Sanders BOOK REVIEWS Elena Passarello’s Animals Strike Curious Poses, reviewed by B. Douglas Caldwell ART Hollie Chastain
Nancy Chen Long
Perched ornamental like an angel
at the apex of a Christmas tree, the bird’s neck is curved,
slender, the elegant sway of a tangent function.
The set of egrets—the score of them, nested as they are
in the treed twilight—they could pass as a scatterplot,
snowy ellipses on a dark Euclidean plane. I want to discover
a pattern, a sine wave to impose, dogmatic
order to instill upon their random arrangement.
There is nothing
more orderly than the number one,
is there? unity and identity,
like Euler’s identity, numbers under the magical clutch
of an equation. When we mix every beautiful
number, it comes down to only one. When solving
for the irrational, there is no intercessory intercept
to invoke, no X in need of saving. On some days,
my incantation is serial, primary,
a set of numbers I chant
recursively. It is a sacrament to count,
beadless. Beads being derivative, rosary or Buddhist,
beads in my hand are powder down, finely disintegrating
and clustered. To be celebrant in a wake of buzzards.
Is that heresy? To be one
red-collared widowbird, mid-molt.
In a volery of birds, to be identity
when all around us, the sutra of dichotomy, narrowing
and scalar, some calculus of imputation, starlings
seen as only black.
I’m Hollie Chastain, a mixed media artist and illustrator working in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Coming from both a graphic design and studio art background, my work has a story-telling quality, mixing found material, strong graphic elements and modern palettes. As well as teaching workshops across the country, I maintain a home studio producing both personal work and client work. My first book, If You Can Cut You Can Collage, was released in November 2017 through Quarto Publishing.
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.
POETRY Albert Abonado • Jessica Guzman Alderman • William Bonfiglio • Lisa Charnock • Steven Cramer • Samantha Leigh Futhey • Jennifer Givhan • Alyssa Jewell • Julie Swarstad Johnson • Julia Levine • Nancy Chen Long • Sarah Fawn Montgomery • Rachel Morgan • Jennifer Moss • Ösel Jessica Plante • Mary Ann Samyn • Brandon Thurman FICTION Joe Baumann • Brian J. Fendrick • Yuly Restrepo • Richard Spilman • A.A. Weiss NONFICTION Karen Babine • Dan Beachy-Quick • James M. Chesbro • Elizabeth Horneber • Mark Irwin • Charlotte Pence • Kari Putterman • Scott Loring Sanders BOOK REVIEWS Elena Passarello’s Animals Strike Curious Poses, reviewed by B. Douglas Caldwell ART Hollie Chastain
Nancy Chen Long
Perched ornamental like an angel
at the apex of a Christmas tree, the bird’s neck is curved,
slender, the elegant sway of a tangent function.
The set of egrets—the score of them, nested as they are
in the treed twilight—they could pass as a scatterplot,
snowy ellipses on a dark Euclidean plane. I want to discover
a pattern, a sine wave to impose, dogmatic
order to instill upon their random arrangement.
There is nothing
more orderly than the number one,
is there? unity and identity,
like Euler’s identity, numbers under the magical clutch
of an equation. When we mix every beautiful
number, it comes down to only one. When solving
for the irrational, there is no intercessory intercept
to invoke, no X in need of saving. On some days,
my incantation is serial, primary,
a set of numbers I chant
recursively. It is a sacrament to count,
beadless. Beads being derivative, rosary or Buddhist,
beads in my hand are powder down, finely disintegrating
and clustered. To be celebrant in a wake of buzzards.
Is that heresy? To be one
red-collared widowbird, mid-molt.
In a volery of birds, to be identity
when all around us, the sutra of dichotomy, narrowing
and scalar, some calculus of imputation, starlings
seen as only black.
I’m Hollie Chastain, a mixed media artist and illustrator working in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Coming from both a graphic design and studio art background, my work has a story-telling quality, mixing found material, strong graphic elements and modern palettes. As well as teaching workshops across the country, I maintain a home studio producing both personal work and client work. My first book, If You Can Cut You Can Collage, was released in November 2017 through Quarto Publishing.
