by Carella Keil
Marie Curie Dreams of Angels
Unstitching elements
and reducing them to purity,
radium and polonium
pulled out from pitchblende,
searching the small spaces
between things, I find them
numinous
and vibrating
in an invisible
nimbus
particles peeling off from electron clouds,
hurtling forth in excited abandon
like heralds proclaiming new faith,
angels I could believe in.
At the Front my angels pierced
the veil of hurt to glean
salvageable flesh from final rupture;
also attacking me, unscreened,
with their murderous scrutiny—
tugging away my marrow’s atoms,
leaving a diminished trace
of myself, just as X-rays
breathe a shadow onto paper.
M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Autumn Sky Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Sky Island Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review, Cathexis Northwest, and The Westchester Review. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.
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.