Volume 38, Issue 2
editorial staff
readers
Rome Rooftop by Paul Collins
Robert Eric Shoemaker
I painted my fingernails three times in the last two months. Yes, they were chipping, peeling back, my scrubbing fingers rubbing off parts of the tip of the nail paint, destroying what little semblance of “painterliness” the odd job had. It wasn’t entirely caprice that took me when I repainted them. But somehow, I was recovering the nails. Hiding something, wanting to release something.
Tiresias has always been bad at “journaling.” We’re more of a talk-it-out fellow. But this reflection, my face in the polish, is urgent. When I disappear into the dark indigo concealer, do I feel safer? When I buy product after product, applying, wiping away, cleansing, polishing, scrubbing, shampooing, clipping, tending, like a garden gone to weed, like a car being detailed time and time again, there is still aging, yes, there is still pain under the paint, there is still a hiccup in the gas line and less nitrogen in the soil— when I do these things, does Tiresias get free?
READ MORE>Melanie Manuel
lately i’ve been thinking about that asteroid,
the one my third grade teacher, mr. vigil said would end us
within the year—what its name was, if it ever had one—
was it stuck elsewhere in the dark echoes, too far into another
century—or the implosion of the sun meant to kiss our bones
into ash the way terminator 2: judgment day does,
i remember, afterwards, seeing a commercial: mummified
yzma from the emperor’s new groove, all purples and feathers,
an afterlife immortalized in thirty seconds, then darkness
of the screen. i cried in the shower. prayed to god. wondering
if there was an answer. any answer. it’s not the first time
i’ve known it—i knew death before all of this, without knowing,
really—i was three, when lola miguela passed, the details
in glimmers: white box, body as still as the deepest slumber,
i told her, wake up—it’s time to go—confused
by my mom’s tears, the proneness in lola’s body, the very lack of her
embrace—the heft of this kind of leaving—a permeation
unwilling to wilt away—what’s left is
a photo of us, where i sat on her knee & she held me
precious this little thing, not privy to knowing
what the world can be, how it can strip away
nothing and everything all the same.
Desmond Everest Fuller
During weekly share time, the new kid told how his grandma made him steamed milk with cocoa. Our first-grade class sat cross-legged on the floor. We’d never had steamed milk; we knew food-stamp skim souring in our fridges. In the milk foam, his grandma planted a squash flower from her garden; a blossom to crush deliciously in his mouth. He described for us this strange delicate thing, smiling like nothing could hurt him. It sounded made-up, like a kinder dream than any I’d ever had.
At home, I asked Dad how milk got steamed. I was six and believed that Dad understood how all things worked.
I wanted sweet foam. I wanted but didn’t mention the flower.
Dad laid his hand over a Folger’s can: when I got older, he’d make me coffee, black, teach me how “real men” took it.
“That kid ever gets too friendly—” Dad gripped my shoulder so hard I thought I might break. “Let him know you ain’t interested.”
So I did.
I had to.
READ MORE>Paul Collins is an artist, curator, and educator living in Nashville, TN. Paul received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College before pursuing an MFA in Painting & Printmaking at Yale University. Paul has enjoyed a swiss-army-knife work history, from selling vegetables at regional farmers’ markets in California to working as an interactive designer and software developer before finally landing a job teaching art. Paul has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, the Hambidge Center, Skowhegan, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. His artwork has been featured in New American Paintings, Number, Native, Art Voices, and the Nashville Scene.
Paul teaches at Austin Peay State University and is represented by Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, TN.
Rome Rooftop by Paul Collins
http:// www.paulpaul.com / https://www.instagram.com/impaulcollins/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.
Robert Eric Shoemaker
Melanie Manuel
lately i’ve been thinking about that asteroid,
the one my third grade teacher, mr. vigil said would end us
within the year—what its name was, if it ever had one—
was it stuck elsewhere in the dark echoes, too far into another
century—or the implosion of the sun meant to kiss our bones
into ash the way terminator 2: judgment day does,
i remember, afterwards, seeing a commercial: mummified
yzma from the emperor’s new groove, all purples and feathers,
an afterlife immortalized in thirty seconds, then darkness
of the screen. i cried in the shower. prayed to god. wondering
if there was an answer. any answer. it’s not the first time
i’ve known it—i knew death before all of this, without knowing,
really—i was three, when lola miguela passed, the details
in glimmers: white box, body as still as the deepest slumber,
i told her, wake up—it’s time to go—confused
by my mom’s tears, the proneness in lola’s body, the very lack of her
embrace—the heft of this kind of leaving—a permeation
unwilling to wilt away—what’s left is
a photo of us, where i sat on her knee & she held me
precious this little thing, not privy to knowing
what the world can be, how it can strip away
nothing and everything all the same.
Paul Collins is an artist, curator, and educator living in Nashville, TN. Paul received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College before pursuing an MFA in Painting & Printmaking at Yale University. Paul has enjoyed a swiss-army-knife work history, from selling vegetables at regional farmers’ markets in California to working as an interactive designer and software developer before finally landing a job teaching art. Paul has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, the Hambidge Center, Skowhegan, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. His artwork has been featured in New American Paintings, Number, Native, Art Voices, and the Nashville Scene.
Paul teaches at Austin Peay State University and is represented by Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, TN.
Rome Rooftop by Paul Collins
http:// www.paulpaul.com / https://www.instagram.com/impaulcollins/
