A Lion in the Water by Zola Cate Picone

A girl runs away from home once, not to leave, but to try on the idea of it.

A Lion in the Water collects poems of childhood fear, shapeshifting home, dream logic, bodily unease, family mythology, and the grotesque. Zola Cate 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, Picone’s 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.

A conversation with Zola Cate Picone about A Lion in the Water will appear in The Small Run, the occasional newsletter from Analog Submission Press, on 10 July 2026.

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EDITION DETAILS
• A5
• 52 pages
• Saddle-stitched
• Printed on recycled paper

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zola Cate Picone is the author of the chapbooks Heirloom Dog and Obey the Unborn: The Natasha Hook Conspiracies, both published by Analog Submission Press. Her short stories and poetry have also appeared in Sobremesa Magazine, Mythos Zine, and other publications.

She was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and currently lives with her Texan husband and their two flat-faced dogs in Houston, Texas.
Follow her on Instagram: @zcp_poetry

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