by Carella Keil
A Glittering, A Glittering, A Glittering
(an erasure from Stephen King’s Carrie)
By morning, the situation was critical:
ablaze, a rage, a face, a destination.
She glittered dully in the light of flames;
a shimmy on her mouth, trembling.
Struck by the resemblance between a knife
and herself, she slipped and glittered,
a serpent in midnight streets
wrestling with shadows.
She, the last word,
a mysterious wonder.
When the pain began,
she held it and waited to make sacrifice,
a knife come home to the glittering hook
of its blade, waiting to kill. The firelight
brighter now, dancing on the wall
like dervishes, a prayer.
Jessica Furtado is a multi-passionate artist whose visual work has been featured in Grub Street, Muzzle Magazine, Waxwing, & elsewhere, and whose writing has appeared in Qwerty, Rogue Agent, & VIDA Review, among others. Jessica’s poetry was a finalist in Best of the Net (2020), and her debut chapbook A Kiss for the Misbehaved (2023) is available from BatCat Press. To see what she’s up to next, visit Jess at www.jessicafurtado.com Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jessoatart/.
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.