[Untitled Image 6760]
Copyright © by Jim Zola. All rights reserved.
Reproduced here with artist’s permission.
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[Untitled Image 6794]
Copyright © by Jim Zola. All rights reserved.
Reproduced here with artist’s permission.
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[Untitled Image 6868]
Copyright © by Jim Zola. All rights reserved.
Reproduced here with artist’s permission.
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[Untitled Image 6988]
Copyright © by Jim Zola. All rights reserved.
Reproduced here with artist’s permission.
|
My photographs are a combination of collage and image manipulation. I love playing with shadows and shapes, to take ordinary objects and distort them. In truth, I am a poet and want-to-be painter who has settled on photography to express myself. I never title my photos. The photographer I admire most is Josef Koudelka. I like the way he left his photographs untitled, just using a date and perhaps place. In this way, the viewer is able to come up with the story behind the photo themselves.
—From Issue 2 of formercactus magazine
The night has silky legs and arms,
tattooed, smokes thin cigarettes,
puffs into a loom of branches,
the cherry tree my brother rammed
with his car the day his dog died.
He drove an old Dodge Dart with push button
transmission, slowly from the street up
and over the curb. Even at that speed,
it’s amazing what damage can be done,
glass and chrome all over. For years
when the sun first came up, the front yard
would sparkle from the tiny glass bits left behind.
The dog was a mutt, smart and loving.
A benji dog with short curly hair
the color of caramel. The vet diagnosed her
with cancer, recommended chemo. Father
laughed and said yeah right, and who’s paying?
The dog lasted about six months after that.
The last few weeks were miserable for everyone.
She stopped eating even when tempted with raw
meat laced with painkillers and vitamins.
When the doctors found cancer cells
in our father’s colon, my brother drove him
to the hospital each day. I imagine these rides,
father smoking, brother messing with
the radio, father clutching the seat
as the car swerves to miss a cat
dashing across the street
into the dark loving woods.
—Published previously in Blood Sugar Poetry (9 March 2018); appears here with poet’s permission
• Four photographs by Zola in South Florida Poetry Journal (scroll down the page to, or run a search for, November 2017)
• [A pithy interview with Jim Zola] in Oyster River Pages (24 October 2017); includes one of his photographs
• Blade, a poem in The Loch Raven Review (Volume 13, Number 1, 2017); poem is second of three on the page.
• Sorrow, a poem “after Chekhov” in Sweet Tree Review (Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2017)
• What Remains, a poem in Twyckenham Notes (Issue 2)
has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for Deaf children, and as a toy designer for Fisher Price; and currently works as a children’s librarian. His publications include a chapbook, The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Treehouse Arts: Blue Pitcher Press), and a full-length poetry collection, What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press, 2014). His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous journals through the years including After the Pause, Bird’s Thumb, Cacti Fur, Cease Cows, Front Porch Review, Literary Orphans, and Main Street Rag, among others. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.