Poet Zach Fishel is currently teaching English to students on a North American reservation in Mandaree, ND. But his collection of storytelling poetry, Windsock Etiquette, was composed during his residence at the Collingwood Arts Center in Toledo. With a foreword by Toledo poet John Dorsey, the collection firmly roots itself in the Rust Belt, using imagery and introspection to discuss love, sex, nature, heartbreak, and the gray areas in between.
Fishel has had poems published in journals across the country, and was nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize twice, but Windsock Etiquette represents his first complete solo collection. The poems are written as individual sonnets, and he plays with poetic form in a way that gives each piece—all of them titleless—an erratic rhythm. As Dorsey writes, “each piece tells its own part of the story . . . a story that is still being written and one that is well worth your time.” As a reader, you feel as though you’re missing something at first, but when you re-read these poems, you come to realize that they’re all pieces of a whole concept: the struggle of being absolutely human.
An excerpt from Windsock Etiquette:
Nooses are not solitary,
as a rope is wound of three chords.
Chords of sheet music spray
the studio floor. Talking suspensions
with magicians is illusionary. Scatter the
scrabble
board and count the waves.
Light pollution can corrode an en
tire car in several
short years. Too much repetition
zips through a streak of cobwebs
woven in triangular (dis) repaired intentions.
Hug nothing in a mirror,
since someone
else will already be doing it best.
Get a copy of Windsock Etiquette from the publisher at redpainthill.com.
