We die by threes and sevens.
Damn the grim siblings
who gloomed our mission
with their telling.
We walk with poked eyes,
missing heads, hearts. Duck, goose, fox.
We talk and learn not to listen.
Unfaithful wives klatch and sag,
brave men knit the tales
they cannot tell – how lovely
the beast was in dying,
how it turned away and sang
into trees ripe with flames
shooting towards heaven.
Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for Deaf children, as a toy designer for Fisher Price, and currently as a children’s librarian. Published in many journals through the years, his publications include a chapbook — The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) — and a full length poetry collection — What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.
–Foreground Art by Claudio Parentela
–Background Art by J Stimp