Volume 25, Issue 2
editorial staff
readers
Featuring work byPOETRY Rosa Alcala • Coleman Barks • Bridget Bell • Michael Chitwood • Okla Elliott • Eileen G’Sell • Patricia Lockwood • Mary Makofske • Shane McCrae • Juan J. Morales • Nance Van Winckel • Shannon K. Winston FICTION Philip Asaph • Joe Hall • Joe Woodward NONFICTION Irene O’Garden INTERVIEWS Coleman Barks • Eileen G’Sell • Joe Hall • Shane McCrae ART Susan Bryant
Michael Chitwood
What would it have cost back then
and how long had she spoken of wanting it?
Such a luxury. It didn’t chop or mow
or plant or harvest the plantings,
but was nearly big as a hayrake
and had to come by train
and be put off at the little store
the tracks ran by. The couplings clanged
and four men heaved to lift its crate
to the store’s creaking porch.
It was odd as a throne there, taking up
so much space, lording over the plain-dressed
who came for sugar and flour
and a string of licorice if they felt flush.
They came for it with a horse-drawn wagon
and went slow with the load,
a singular parade along the rutted road
that played it a bit, buzzed the taut strings
and she glancing back, smiling, at the song
it already knew, chiming from its good cabinet.
Her hands caressed it, then years of hands,
all touching the tunes where they were to be touched.
The last time it was moved, to the great granddaughter,
the tuner said the sound board was warped,
too old really to be anything but a picture stand.
But she couldn’t let it go, its fine wood grain
like an old portrait, sepiaed, showing
its antique craft, its age spots and fades.
She had a carpenter come and look
and yes he thought he could use it,
and the table turned out beautifully,
the top with the design where music books had propped.
Some evenings when the dishes are cleared
and everyone else gone off to their occupations
she sits back down and places her hands
and practices her silence, the long song,
the wanting of it, the touch of years.
READ MORE>Susan Bryant is a fine art photographer. She received her BFA in painting in 1976 from Indiana University and her MFA in photography in 1978 from Indiana State University. She is a Professor Emerita of Art at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she has taught photography for the past 30 years. Her personal work includes gelatin silver prints, hand-colored silver prints, digital photographs, and most recently, the 19th century processes of daguerreotypes, tintypes and wet plate collodion negatives and positives (ambrotypes). Her work has been widely exhibited across the United States in solo and juried exhibitions. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship and is represented by The Cumberland Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee.
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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.
Featuring work byPOETRY Rosa Alcala • Coleman Barks • Bridget Bell • Michael Chitwood • Okla Elliott • Eileen G’Sell • Patricia Lockwood • Mary Makofske • Shane McCrae • Juan J. Morales • Nance Van Winckel • Shannon K. Winston FICTION Philip Asaph • Joe Hall • Joe Woodward NONFICTION Irene O’Garden INTERVIEWS Coleman Barks • Eileen G’Sell • Joe Hall • Shane McCrae ART Susan Bryant
Michael Chitwood
What would it have cost back then
and how long had she spoken of wanting it?
Such a luxury. It didn’t chop or mow
or plant or harvest the plantings,
but was nearly big as a hayrake
and had to come by train
and be put off at the little store
the tracks ran by. The couplings clanged
and four men heaved to lift its crate
to the store’s creaking porch.
It was odd as a throne there, taking up
so much space, lording over the plain-dressed
who came for sugar and flour
and a string of licorice if they felt flush.
They came for it with a horse-drawn wagon
and went slow with the load,
a singular parade along the rutted road
that played it a bit, buzzed the taut strings
and she glancing back, smiling, at the song
it already knew, chiming from its good cabinet.
Her hands caressed it, then years of hands,
all touching the tunes where they were to be touched.
The last time it was moved, to the great granddaughter,
the tuner said the sound board was warped,
too old really to be anything but a picture stand.
But she couldn’t let it go, its fine wood grain
like an old portrait, sepiaed, showing
its antique craft, its age spots and fades.
She had a carpenter come and look
and yes he thought he could use it,
and the table turned out beautifully,
the top with the design where music books had propped.
Some evenings when the dishes are cleared
and everyone else gone off to their occupations
she sits back down and places her hands
and practices her silence, the long song,
the wanting of it, the touch of years.
READ MORE>Susan Bryant is a fine art photographer. She received her BFA in painting in 1976 from Indiana University and her MFA in photography in 1978 from Indiana State University. She is a Professor Emerita of Art at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she has taught photography for the past 30 years. Her personal work includes gelatin silver prints, hand-colored silver prints, digital photographs, and most recently, the 19th century processes of daguerreotypes, tintypes and wet plate collodion negatives and positives (ambrotypes). Her work has been widely exhibited across the United States in solo and juried exhibitions. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship and is represented by The Cumberland Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee.
