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.

"For We Who Love Our Critters," essay by Su Zi

For We Who love Our Critters

Uh-oh. One morning, Grace is walking crooked, head tilted, although the smile upon seeing you is always genuine. Then, there’s the staggering, that is laboriously righted because you are watching. When you sneak a peek, you see a furrowed brow and a distant look that might be pain.

Now, you are in a veterinary clinic. Grace cowers behind your knee—no excitement at new friends. There’s a waiting room and it’s filled with beings: humans and their nonverbal family members. The staff seems harassed, impatient and the wait to be seen has you shifting and looking, vigilant.  It is not a quiet place. By the time you both take some moments with the doctor, there’s lots of talk, a blood draw, a prescription; but Grace is still walking sideways, head titled. You are in an agony of helplessness.

But, what if when you went to seek help, the clinic is quiet; there’s a collection of pottery in a subtle and elegant display in a nook next to a large window. There are multiple examination rooms, doors closed discretely. This clinic is decorated in art, carefully collected pieces of furniture, of sculpture inside and out. A dog comes in, creamy locks wafting with a stiffly perky stride, and despite the taut leash, comes to greet you—you look into a worried face, slightly aged, with eyes that are beseeching. The humans tugs taut the tether, making boisterous sounds to the human receptionist.

This is the Chi University Small Animal Clinic in Reddick, Florida—although there are locations in Australia, Germany, Japan, on six continents, with the AI search note of “making TCVM [Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine] accessible worldwide”. This quiet place with sculptures and paddocks is a school where western-educated veterinarians get a Master’s Certification in Chinese medicine for our nonhuman compatriots. Located on a lovely, still-rural county road, the facility is run almost exclusively on solar power. There are 90 acres preserved as green space with minimally intrusive, but decidedly no-skimping building construction. There’s a separate building for horses, and plenty of room to swing a truck and trailer behind the covered arena and basketball hoop, and rarely is there not some gorgeous equine arriving or departing with a slight glow.

The Chi is, in undeniable fact, a world-class facility. Phone calls are handled off-site to maintain quiet and to “minimize stress in pets, owners and staff” according to the receptionist. It is intentionally a place of peace. Treatment utilizes the luxury of time. 

While Traditional Chinese Medicine might be utterly foreign in concept to many, it is a classical art, and as such has history, lineages, and complexities. All this is irrelevant to your unwell, nonverbal and potentially furry family member. For you, who loves and must pay the bill, TCM has many explanations. As a human who too has been schooled thoroughly in western thought , but who has found the seed of health by allowing acupuncture upon me, it is a remarkable experience in both personal body awareness and that too-rare sensation we have now of just taking some time being in our bodies and aware of it; the reality for all of our nonhuman companions.

Grace had continued to stagger sideways with a tilted head and what looked to be increasing nausea and vertigo after the chaos of the standard clinic experience. Despair haunted us. Then, fortune smiled in the form of Dr Xie, the founder of the Chi, who put gentle and deft hands upon her, began a single treatment of acupuncture while Grace seemed to be both watchful and dozing. Afterwords, she seemed very introspective, but her steps were steady—a respite of the crooked stagger and tilted head.  The next morning, she looked at me square on, and gave me a smile that glowed—glows in mind still—the glow of pure love.

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.

The Last Tattoo by Su Zi

 

The Last Tattoo

It might be that some of us have scars—surgical or experiential—as souvenirs of where we have been. Certainly, as children, some of us might have been privy to those intimate histories of where the scar was born, how it came into existence, how we grow around it if we are lucky enough to become old trees.

It also might be that some of us have tattoos—one or many, faded or still fresh—and these too ride shotgun to every moment ever after. For those you have considered, but yet to have encountered the tattoo experience: it is intimate. For those with a few tattoos, we know of what sense of resonance we must have with the totem to choose it.

And also, it might be that there are a few tattoo collectors—people who have many tattoos. Sometimes we might see a sleeve—an entire arm—in a swirl of markings, some intricate, some boldly graphic, a personal totem of the body.

I have many tattoos. Some of them I can only see with multiple mirrors, or in photographs. There are some in places few people will see ever, although there are photographs. As a tattooed person, you will be photographed—first by the artist who takes a picture for their portfolio, which is only of your fresh tattoo prior to bandaging. It might be that you attend events specifically for tattooing, and these have a history unto themselves, as all ritual events do. At one point, there was a convention of women tattoo artists only: Marked for Life. At such conventions, there are photographers. Some of the photographers exhibit through galleries and publication. I am told that I, as a tattooed person—in addition to specific tattoos—have appeared, perpetual apparition, me—in Italy, a place I shall never see.

Eventually, it might be that some of us grow into health issues. It might be that a surgeon scars a tattoo, or that life scars a tattoo. When we wear a tattoo for years and years, it is no longer a totem on our skin, it is our skin. While archeologists have found tattooed bones, our eventual future, we are still in our skins.

But, it might be that the rigors of that intimate ritual are eventually beyond us—perhaps there is only skin on bone now.

No more new tattoos.

And so, what of what is now the last one—

For me, it is a shared tattoo with someone no longer in my life

For me, it is a mark made in grief for a life lost

It is a standard flash broken heart that can only be seen if I am warm enough to wear short sleeves. We were walk-ins right before closing, in pre-plague times when every shop had to smell of green soap. The tattoo is on my forearm, right between the elbow and the crook with visible blue veins. I cannot remember the name of the artist. The shop is now closed.

But the tattoo rides with me in everything I do—because the grief it totemized rides with me in everything I do. People might see it riding my arm between Kimo’s forearm rose and the upper sleeve done long ago by Patty Kelley; there’s rich history in all the arts, and this includes tattoos and their artists. 

And while there are many opportunities for remembrance in our ordinary days, some ritual holidays might echo deeper for our own personal ghosts. We all honor our own histories in our own ways; for some of us, we wear them 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.

The Making of Red Mare 30 by Su Zi

 

Red Mare 30

I am making another Red Mare: This one will be number 30.

I have made Red Mare through the years—first just June, now both of the Solstice.

Making is a meditation; there is a process, and each part of the process is a meditation.

First, there’s the rude saw of investment—the manuscript has a hue, and choosing paper was once a meditation in the tenderness of touch: what will hold the ink, what will embrace the text. 

Also, the secret petticoat of the flyleaf—over the years, it had been mulberry inclusion, Tibetan handmade with seashells, bamboo paper and this edition is a Japanese Onuro Lace.

And always are the hours of sewing, a one knot stitch for the binding that a teacher said once was from Japan, too, as are the sheets folded raw edge to the seam—this edition, the text too has texture.

But of all the aspects of Red Mare, the first meditation is the block.

To blockprint, the image must be reversed, letters and numbers are backwards, and the block must be carved to reveal itself.   There are technical tricks, but habit has me drawing directly onto the block—seeing the reversals under my pen. For this edition, and for the first time, i took notes.

They are incomplete, because this edition is still under construction. There are thirteen sections: a log of this project...

1

it’s seeing in reverse

the direction of flow

the shadows change—the light changes color in autumn

spectrum. Spectral

it is I

(hybrid2)

the walking bones

speaking with my hands

2

carving each negative away

the blade

this knife, the direction, how much will be seen

and always stopping         making water 

3

(20 hours after medical treatment, unsmiling cheshire)

to see what will be read in reverse

to just look

sometimes too ill to pick up the knife

(chime)

And there’s a sudden memory of Red Mare at book fairs—she was out, seen; an edition is a crop, a litter of poetry. She was seen in cities, in Tampa, in New Orleans. Each edition a micro collection of ready to read fingers to fiber.

4

the lines of the light

ever steady in motion

steady

the knife

against the light

(hybrid3)

a look

a cut

a line

ever in reverse

reverse reveal

5

stillness

hands shaking

6

the small islands

the current of the cut

the flow of the knife.

7

sharpen the knives

spill water on stone

eyes blur

hands shake

(hybrid4)

8

cut the line backwards

and still see the flow

9

the paper

can catch fight, an organza in the hue of first light

10

the plate rests

awaits testing

the paper waits

her eventual runway

i await with myself

in hunger

11

suddenly pink

print the plate

press azul oscuro

and shifting colors

ever because

(hybrid5)

12

as the prints dry

air and paper

touch the night

13

folding

what it is to

this touching.

Note Below: Next come the cotton

         Next comes the needle

           Planned release is always to honor the Solstice.

Red Mare Origin Story

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.