by Carella Keil
Volatility
(The Periodic Table)
The bodies of matter, from their old arrangements stirred by the new factor, then combine anew in such a way as genders living things.
–Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Once you step over your lines, everything changes, anxious quest
for completion, perpetual search, multiple bonding frantic rounds
combining and combining – just one line, one square will do it; you
skip and run molten, the stuff of explosions and restlessness,
creativity and destruction, elemental energy, risking for creation and
flow, lightning transformation from this to that and after burning and
pressure, smashing and roiling split foundations into reimagined
new substance, you are reborn as earth and stars and suns, pure and
gleaming, flung into mountain and breath, or left a lifeless, smoking
shell. I stay in my square, aligned and content, no gamble needed to
make me complete; I dwell safe within my confines, inner lid
luminosity, neither giving nor taking, placid, as spectacular plays or
thefts shift uneasy beyond my walls, a noble fence, no information
desired.
Gurupreet K. Khalsa considers connections, space, time, cosmic flow, reality, illusion, and possibility. Her poems have appeared in The Poet, New York Quarterly, IHRAF Publishers, aurora journal, Delta Poetry Review, and other online and print publications. Multiple poems have received awards. Currently a resident of Mobile, Alabama after living many other places, she holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Design and when she’s not floating about in space is a part time instructor in graduate education programs.
Carella Keil is a writer and digital artist who creates surreal, dreamy images that explore nature, fantasy realms, melancholia and inner dimensions. Her art has been published in a myriad of literary and art magazines, including Chestnut Review, Wander Magazine and Skyie Magazine, and featured on the covers of Glassworks Magazine, Colors: The Magazine, Frost Meadow Review, Nightingale & Sparrow, and forthcoming on the cover of Straylight Magazine. instagram.com/catalogue.of.dreams twitter.com/catalogofdream.