by K.G. Ricci
State of the Universe
First came the Big Bang.
Time passed, the earth cooled,
life evolved, and mammals
came to rule the planet.
Then last Thursday Laura
ran off with her dressage instructor.
Some people take interest
in other events that occurred
along the way:
The emergence of human language.
Wars that turned out differently
than expected.
Movies that turned out
exactly as everyone thought.
To me, looking back
over 14 billion years,
most of those things
didn’t amount to much.
I mark time by that
which matters most.
Bang.
Mammals.
Laura.
Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in About Place, Barrelhouse, Bellevue Literary Review, Briar Cliff Review, Cutthroat, Flint Hills Review, Sport Literate, and ZYZZYVA. Mark lives in New Mexico.
K.G. Ricci, a self-taught New York City artist, made a collage on a file cabinet in 2015. The creative possibilities of the medium immediately inspired him. Fifty cut and paste panels followed, visual improvisations on 20” x 40” or 2’ X 4’ hardboard. Recently, Ricci sustained his implied narrative focus in Numbered-Not Named, a series of original pieces, 6” x 9” on black stock. His current project, Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room, is a visual flash fiction series of books with a single word or a fragment of text in each collage composition. Ricci has exhibited in 27 galleries including solo shows and many more online galleries. His collages have been published in poetry and literary magazines nationally and internationally online and in print.