by Carella Keil
Petroglyph
Lesson 1: Someday, the connective tissue found in mysterious
black cubes will marry our palms together. Someday, the close-
ups of bikini clad bikers on crutches will convey something
other than a fear of chromatics. An inch at a time. An inch & a
half.
Lesson 2: The ones we want to be articulate & fragile are also
the ones we want to cure via hypnosis & larval therapy. They pry
their teeth out with razor blades & expose the contents of their
spirits by casting halogen sensors into shaded regions.
Lesson 3: Horsetails & whisk ferns. Ghost agriculture & tertiary
infection. We offer up our services to the mossy lords of plasma
& ambiguous test results. We sublimate ourselves to the world
of spheres by converting all the straight lines in our body to
invertebrate seed plants.
Petroglyph
We enter the bloodstream of another & remain there until we
have gorged sufficiently on starchy antioxidants, baked goods, &
oddly-coloured sauces. We peak under the surface of the water
in the hopes of untangling a keel of popular metaphors. Our
tattoos are tetrahedrons & pachyderms. Our lips are drawn
inwards by surface textures & geologic transformations.
If we know one thing about ruminants it’s that we don’t know
one thing about ruminants. And that oxygen thieves will sweep
their grainy shadows over us while we sleep.
Petroglyph
One of us speaks a language whose articles have their own
microtonal fabric. Spelling mistakes are impossible without
metadata. They say, “I’ve got an idea. I’ll take the form of a
jellyfish if you’ll become a sea of luminescent plankton. That
way, we’ll be able to pass right through one another without
anyone even noticing.”
I nod. But what I think that really means: They’ll get to drift
aimlessly & produce colourful orbs of light, while I’ll remain
frozen in the water column & struggle to swim against the
current.
Craig Foltz is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He’s the author of three books of poetry and/or prose, the most recent of which, Locals Only, is out via Compound Press. He currently lives and works on the slopes of a (theoretically) dormant volcano, somewhere on the west coast of New Zealand.
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.