Su Zi's Review of LIKE ZEROS, LIKE PEARLS by Lola Haskins

 

The Benefits of Bookfairs 

Local communities hold a variety of events, and perusal of these listings will often yield bookfairs, either as independent events or in conjunction with craft fairs, or other forms of small market. Of course, the literate person ought to attend such events: it does take quite the effort for these solo artists, or small collectives to write the book, have it in handheld form, and then transport to the event, where they hopefully sit all day, waiting for you.  The genres offered at book fairs will vary; author displays often mirrors their genre-- authors of horror might have a display of black cloth, or go as far as to costume; certainly, children’s authors might have a pirate or a puppet; and local history authors can sometimes offer a fascination of research-intensive nonfiction. 

And then, sometimes, there’s a literary author: present because that’s home turf and they are sitting at a table with a stack of books as well. At the 2026 Sunshine State Book Festival, among the half a dozen tables for poetry, there was Lola Haskins. Unquestionably a citizen of the literary community in poetry, Lola was there with many books, including the 2025 Charlotte Lit Press release Like Zeros, Like Pearls, a trade-sized, perfect bound, full-length collection—a volume that includes two pages of acknowledgments and a bibliography.

That the book has “A Modest Bibliography” (71) belies the arc of this work, which is divided into three sections, occasionally adorned with a discrete illustration, and which sometimes cites these sources in the poems of the text. That the poems employ research might remind an astute reader of biographical poems, and these poems are biographical; however, the lives portrayed here are more than marginalized, to many readers these lives are invisible. Haskins addresses the invisibility of these lives in a four-paragraph prose preface that states,” [...] the only time I noticed insects was when they called attention to themselves by being beautifully marked or by attacking me “and then says “suddenly realized that ignoring whole worlds wasn’t okay”. With an epigram from the 14^th Dalai Lama about teaching children to “love the insects”, and much cultural information about the key-to-life species to our life on earth being bees, Haskins dedicated volume causes us to consider immediately what sort of worlds we notice, want to read about, and how that consideration can be meditations in poetry.

The work’s title is the last line of the poem, “Poem Ending with an Image from ‘The Mustard seed Garden Manual of Painting (1782)’ ” and begins with, “Only after the twelve instar are/ the ears of her legs ready to listen” (28). The assonant repetition of “instar are” has both a slant repetition in the poem with the stanzas ending ‘her/her/herself” but echoes with ancestral recognition of Ishar—she of the eight-pointed star, the planet Venus, the Mesopotamian goddess (in a general definition) of love, beauty, sex and war.  That this, and many of the poems in the text, concern themselves with insect reproduction rituals gives the poems here both beauty and a sense of the macabre.

Meditations on the lives of insects throughout time and culture are considered in these poems. In “Cricket, Vietnam”, a single stanza poem of two sentences, we cross both the globe and cultures:

Snowy tree crickets

synchronize their songs

until leaf, branch and core

are one repeating

 tremble. When Yen

was asked

to define moonlight,

in pearl and dim blue

she painted this.

                         (56)

While the poem’s opening lines include four consonant repetitions of  S, the repetition through the poem is on the assonant E of “tree/leaf/repeat” that also includes “crickets/ tremble” and the rhyme of “when Yen” that shifts consideration from sound to color and the meditation of listening to that of painting.

Ekphrastic considerations are fully at play in this work: Haskins begins at personal observation, delves into research, and considers the juxtaposition of lives in each poem. The author’s biography includes collaboration with other artists in music, and it ought to be no surprise thus that the auditory world is a strong element in this work. Haskins has long been a literary light, and the author website has prompt delivery.  As we consider our beleaguered planet, our extreme storms and images of homes washed away, Haskins asks us to consider the other lives, small and without much notice by our gargantuan doings, that are nonetheless cohabitants of our world as well.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.

GAS Featured Poet: Bob McAfee

 Bob McAfee is a retired software consultant who lives with his wife near Boston. He has written nine books of poetry, mostly on Love, Aging, and the Natural World. For the last several years he has hosted a Wednesday night Zoom poetry workshop. Since 2019, he has had 141 poems selected by 57 different publications. Two poems nominated for Best of the Net. His website, www.bobmcafee.com, contains links to all his published poetry.

Quiet Is

the doe hidden in tall grass,

the lion stalking by upwind;

the January bear dreaming of salmon,

his belly anticipating the Spring spawn;

the winds mellowing in the hurricane’s eye,

the seagulls flailing to hold the attic of the sky;

the trees talking at midnight, willows whispering  

prophecies as the moon slides behind the tamarack;

the city settling in after the bars have closed,

the early morning garbage trucks still sleeping;

the tom cat trying to make it home

through suburban coyotes howling in pantomime;

the patrol car parked behind the Piggly Wiggly,

the cop nursing his empty coffee cup;

a man, lying catty-cornered on his king-sized bed,

alone in perfect isolation.

My Mother’s Hair

She lies in a hospice bed, 

her hair spilled out around her head,

longer than I ever remembered, so white 

it looks blue in the afternoon sunlight

pouring through the windows, glistening.

My daughter applies a damp sponge 

to the cracked lips and tongue, 

raises the head so the lush 

hair leaps to the waiting brush,

relates all the day’s events 

in a voice of great intensity,

just in case Mom is listening.

After a while, my grand-daughter, a nurse, 

takes over, expertly pulls and smooths,

every stroke well-practiced and rehearsed;

this is not the first dying woman she has soothed. 

My mother went to the beauty salon each week, 

her hair a sea of lacquered wave and frozen curl,

but now it looks so soft along her cheeks

I could bury my young boy’s face in its carefree swirl.

My great-granddaughter, age four, 

as though death is commonplace,

leans to kiss my mother’s face 

with deep concern.

I lean toward the bed and hear soft singing, a lullaby,

and I resist the urge to cry 

as I await my turn. 

GAS Featured Poet: Alex Johnson

 Dubbed "the Baudelaire of our time" by John Shirley, co-founder of Cyberpunk and lyricist for Blue Oyster Cult, Alex S. Johnson is a longtime friend of such lovely artists as Ellyn Maybe, Iris Berry and Richard Modiano. His books include The Doom Hippies, Bizarrely Departed, Skull Vinyl: Poems 2012-2017 and Songs for Dark Cabaret. Two of his books are archived at Harvard's Widener Library. He lives in Carmichael, California with his family. 

Cuckoo

"The cuckoo is the state bird of most states of mind"-Ellyn Maybe

I really think I've lost it

This time...or have there been

More 

Pileups on the cerebral

101?

Vanished

He vanished, his

Eyes swept clean of 

All standing wars and 

Furniture.

That's some escape pod he's got,

she said.

I nodded.

Ellyn giggled and nodded. Also.

We were still trying to get through

the fast food drive through and

through

&

far from sapping themselves like

very clumsy gangsters in a 

1930s film noir, the explosive

tumult of

Giggles expanded 

Increased

Unto the seventh generation of swine...Hunter Thompson in the eaves, cooing like a creme brulee that thought it was a film by

Jean Luc Goddard. 

Micro-Aggression

Everybody off the bus, and that's an

Order....this means

You and

You and the

Distingrated face-looking

Man with the eyeball clock, smoking 

His own fist.

GAS Featured Poet: John J. Ronan

 

  John J. Ronan is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, a former Ucross Fellow, Bread Loaf Scholar, and Poet Laureate of Gloucester, MA. My book Marrowbone Lane (Backwaters/University of Nebraska, 2010) was a Highly Recommended selection of the Boston Authors Club. That book was followed by Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown (Backwaters/University of Nebraska, 2017). A new book, The Idea of Light, appeared in June, 2025. Linda Pastan, once called his work "Very good indeed: original, assured, just a touch sardonic." His poems have appeared in Times Literary Supplement, Main Street Rag,Woven Tale, Thrush, Confrontation, Folio, Threepenny Review, The Recorder, Hollins Critic, New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Greensboro Review, Notre Dame Review, NYQ, et. al.

The Gardener

 

The patio pots, housed for the winter,

Boast crotons, jasmines, ferns,

With here and there a stowaway clover, 

Dandelions, a blade or two of grass –

Accidentals as ever unabashed beside

The cute and coddled, the nursery-purchased.

Left to themselves, our guests will survive

The windless kitchen, the chlorinated rain,

Off-to-school and -work routines,

The vacuum, baking days, Fabreze.

And on Thanksgiving or New Year’s, knots

Of friends and family around the island,

A wine-dark, suburban sea

Debating condos in Florida, the untried

Tesla, tuition, A.I.

With Easter and a last possible frost,

It’s out they go, both proud and rowdy, 

Under the reckless sun, into the varied air.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Arvilla Fee

 

Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband, three of her five children, and two dogs. She teaches for Clark State College, is the lead poetry editor for October Hill Magazine, and has been published in over 100 magazines. Her three poetry books, The Human Side, This is Life, and Mosaic: A Million Little Pieces are available on Amazon. Arvilla’s life advice: Never travel without snacks. Visit her 

Keep Shining

 

a bedraggled body

that bears the brunt

of poison in my cells:

radiation, chemo—

it’s not for the faint of heart

 

I’m fixed on my reflection,

protruding clavicle,

wrists thin enough to break

with a single backwards snap,

ribs rubbing against my shirt—

 

who is this woman staring

back at me with hollow eyes

and white-washed skin?

I blink and look again—

ah, there I am, a single spark

 

behind amber eyes; I smile,

apply a coat of lipstick

then dab on a bit of blush;

I cover my cold, bald head

with a silver-studded beanie;

 

There you are, I say.

In all your glam and glory. I’m

nothing if not stubborn, a dogmatic

blazing candle who refuses

to be silenced by the dark.

GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

 

Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct literary magazines and websites and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.

 

Having

  

The problem with wants is we imagine they’re needs

but whenever we get a thing we thought we wanted

we soon realise it wasn’t what we wanted or needed.

  

Needs are all about what’s lacking in our lives—

not necessarily what’s simply absent,

that we’ve mislaid or lost and might even miss—

but things that, if we had to live without them,

would lessen and possibly injure us.

  

Missing things can be replaced.

Damaged things are challenging.

Some can be repaired but most

repairs are only temporary and,

eventually, all things disappoint.

  

This, of course, returns us to our original problem:

i.e. what we want, need and might someday need.

Friends are not hearts and hearts are not teacups.

  

The sad truth is both wants and needs are luxuries.

We make do with what is available.

Life rarely hands over what we want or even need.

We have what we have until we no longer have it.

But at least we had it, at least that.