Zola Cate Picone on A Lion in the Water
The sixth title from Analog Submission Press in 2026 is Zola Cate Picone’s A Lion in the Water.
This is Picone’s third chapbook with the press, following Heirloom Dog and Obey the Unborn: The Natasha Hook Conspiracies.
A Lion in the Water collects poems of childhood fear, shapeshifting home, dream logic, bodily unease, family mythology, and the grotesque. Picone writes through animals, objects, food, houses, wounds, and half-understood memories: lions, ants, sharks, ravens, Wite-Out, butter, skorts, headbands, Diet Coke, cheap ale, old rooms, strange doors, and scars that surface beneath the water.
Across its three sections: Shapeshifting Home, Hollow Thumb, and Cheap Ale, the chapbook embraces prose-poem narrative, lyric fragment, drawing, visual spacing, and associative collision. This is a collection about unstable homes and the shelters we build inside ourselves. A book of twiggy chaos, silver scars, old receipts, hospital lips, strange currents, and moments of becoming.
In this conversation, Picone talks about childhood perspective, dream logic, defiance, discomfort, mystery, and the shelter poetry can build.
The chapbook opens with ‘Rented Lion’s Den [Prologue],’ a childhood runaway story that becomes a meditation on home, fear, protection, and the different forms danger can take. How did this piece come to be the prologue, and what do you think it reveals about the collection by being at the beginning?
I hoped to bring a child's shy version of self-awareness, and the stinging impression of a child's lack of power or independence into the frame. Existing at the mercy of grown-ups and their concepts of protection, children can often receive both the adult's hurt and their love. I wanted to continue having a conversation about this messy contrast, so I’m hoping this story from my own childhood can throw the reader immediately into the deep end of A Lion in the Water.
The title phrase appears in ‘Our Purgatory Shapes,’ where “our purgatory shapes dance like lions in the water.” What made A Lion in the Water feel like the right title for the chapbook?
The title originally came from the idea of a lion representing the image of self, and the water symbolising how we can hide from (and inside) our chaotic emotions and allow them to eventually drown us, or decide to let them help us heal. 'Our Purgatory Shapes' is about the contradiction of having to accept our human limitations, while also having the desire to completely defy them and break out from their prison. This poem was sort of a love letter to the title, if you will.
Home shifts throughout the collection. It is a cabin, a creek, a rented lion’s den, a grandmother’s house, a dream house, a nightmare house, and finally something closer to an open door. How did the idea of home change for you as these poems came together?
I was going through many endings, beginnings, and transitions in my own life at the time of writing this, so home did not have a grounded sensation, but a constantly shapeshifting one. What I came to understand was that home was never meant to be a solid place, but instead, maybe more like an open door into the unknown that always has its arms out wide in invitation and welcome, no matter where you may be hiding.
The collection seems interested in what children half-understand: adult danger, shame, desire, family tension, religious language, and the rules of the body. What draws you back to that child’s perspective, and what can be seen from there that might be lost in an adult voice?
Children are expected to somehow know a lot without knowing a lot. So they emulate and observe. They get into trouble. They play pretend. Everything that forms us into who we are, began way before endlessly trying to iron out all the misguided blame during adulthood. I can never leave my childhood self behind, in their joys and in their tears, they still have a lot to convey to me. I guess I can separate adulthood from childhood, but I won't ever be able to separate childhood from adulthood. I think focusing the lens through the child's curious (and restricted) perspective lets us see the undiluted shape of ourselves and others again, without all the extra sharp edges we carry as adults.
Several of the poems return to childhood discomfort and control: the plaid skort, spiky headbands, tight clothing, unwanted jewellery, adults who “like to make you sparkle.” How do those details help you write about the pressure to be made into a certain kind of girl, child, or body?
Vividly reconnecting and writing specifically about breaking one of those god-awful spiky headbands in half (in 'Nest of Twiggy Chaos') truly gives me a satisfaction nothing else ever could. The pressure from growing up as an anxious tomboy meant I did not want to stand out, and the girly accessories that were thrust upon me made me feel not only physically uncomfortable, but emotionally and mentally awry as well. Becoming an adult and gaining full autonomy is of course a genuine perk. But I still wouldn't change any of my more unfortunate childhood experiences to grow up more comfortably, as that would close myself off to my first meeting with defiance and rebellion. 'Death of a Plaid Skort' is an ardent nod to this introduction.
‘Silver Scars // Claws Beneath’ contains dream logic: ocean, shark, bathtub, claws, drowning, and then the recognition of scars across the body. What role do dreams, nightmares, and symbolic images play in helping these poems reach a sense of emotional truth?
Bringing the subconscious into play is always really fun for me. In the dream/nightmare sequences, I wanted there to be a sense of resolution. The dreamer experiences mental confusion and emotional unrest, but ultimately they know the truth behind the curtain. They can't ever actually lie to themselves, no matter how much effort they put in. If you can't face yourself during the day, you'll have no choice at night.
Many of these poems feel haunted by objects: Wite-Out, butter, skorts, headbands, Diet Coke, cheap blinds, almond flour, old houses, strange food, animal bodies. How do objects help you anchor the more surreal or unstable parts of the work?
Haunted is the right word. The objects around us might make us feel safe, until we find out what lies and misconceptions they hold. When observing our environment, objects can act like clues and secret codes. You can even use an object, like a bottle of Wite-Out, for its intended use, or for something considered irrelevant to that item. 'Almond Flour Eyelashes' is about feeling clear that you know what you are observing, and then finding out you may be wrong about the whole situation. Familiar objects really help me to build a scene, and anchor it into some sense of tangible reality, but I also hope they help me to destroy what is no longer necessary.
There is a strange tenderness in the grotesque throughout this collection. The poems do not soften discomfort, but they often make it vivid or funny, or even oddly beautiful. What draws you toward the grotesque, and how does it help you approach truth, or tenderness, or pain?
You’ve described my ideas of discomfort perfectly. I think the darkness we experience in our youth moves more seamlessly. And in that darkness, we start to attach to bad habits, but even a bad habit like smoking can look very beautiful, as the smoke itself is very performative. This life can't exist without duality, so I think we need to choose to embrace the grotesque more where we can, turn it sideways, and notice its individual light. Sometimes you have to dig up a rotting corpse (politely) in order to understand how it died; that's how I approach writing, or dissecting, something like a lawless truth buried beneath a subtle facade of pain.
The language in A Lion in the Water often seems to resist neat explanation. It moves through sound, association, image, and collision. How do you think about mystery in a poem, and how do you know when to clarify something versus let it remain strange?
I absolutely let the feeling (or personality) of the poem tell me what story it wants to reveal, hide, distort, or display proudly on a shelf. Even though I'm physically writing the poem, I often feel like I'm just channeling an abstract message that wishes to be realised onto the page. I don't try to give it direction, it gives me direction. After the first draft is finished, I have to be careful in editing, because I want to make sure I don't try to take too much control and steer it away from its original intention.
This is your third chapbook with Analog Submission Press, and your work has a recognisable visual presence: generous spacing, fragments, brackets, slashes, and movement between prose and lyric forms. How does A Lion in the Water feel connected to or different from your earlier books?
There is definitely a lot more of my own personal childhood thoughts, emotions, and experiences weaved through A Lion in the Water. My overall style is certainly the same across all three, but the character narratives and scopes I enjoy writing with in my previous two chapbooks don't show up in this current book in the same way. I also decided to have three separate, yet very much related, core parts in this collection that expand this particular “storyline” further.
A Lion in the Water is available to pre-order now.
The chapbook is published as a limited edition. Each copy is A5, 52 pages, saddle-stitched, and printed on recycled paper.
Pre-orders include mini broadsides printed on neon pink and neon blue card stock, featuring artwork from Zola Cate Picone’s previous Analog Submission Press chapbooks.
Launches 17 July.
