Patent Cheeks

To see him again
if only to see his eyes,
that gloom within patent
cheeks of dirt.

Plunging to a surreal city,
where eight balls land,

bending outwards,
headed for the universe.

He holds a twirl
of peculiar questions,
on a clear sky.

No longer depressed
by my presence,
a scrubbed out pot
stems from his skin.

He sits inside the café
and manicures his brain,
pointed down by furrowed lashes.

His sickened flames gasp
without the knots of electricity,
mixed up in the dark,
to be left earnest another day.

A recurring dream
of real life
never seemed so balanced,

until he used a screw driver
against my sides

to get under
my extinguished line,
where fear wears angst,

competing to pretend
to lick the air.

Not holding back
how many nights
are spent untouched
by pillows of hands.

Remembering that pedal of touch,
before sipping lemons.

The light squeeze
of dearness,
that pleases lips.

A different language
hums her obsession,
dropping off echoes.

How to touch my thighs
and not replay
the lines, the entrances and exits,

the scarred attempts
to enter back into
the bottom of the clouds.

To be closed off from
my own direction
to pet the sky.

I will fly across
a dropped light,
when the phone sings Amelie,

what I imagine a painting
would implode.

It smears over our clothes,
knocking on his black hole.

Hanna Pachman usually writes about the destructive influence of objectification and technology. She has had poetry published by Oddball Magazine and Aberration Labyrinth.

Art can illuminate even the most elusive and difficult to comprehend ideas. Visual rules and tightly codified visual metaphors help scientists communicate complex ideas mostly amongst themselves, but they can also become barriers to new ideas and insights. Dr. Regina Valluzzi’s images are abstracted and diverged from the typical rules and symbols of scientific illustration and visualization; they provide an accessible window into the world of science for both scientists and non-scientists.