Gravity’s Rainbow

considering inconsiderable
inconsolable consoles in
incomprehensible manuals
of use I read about the
warrantees which are not
guarantees of anything
in particular, but mere
warnings that things may
not work as planned in
the offing, on and off
may be relied upon most
days but let’s be honest
this piece was assembled
by disgruntled grunt-labor
and they couldn’t give a
shit if you are electrocuted,
contused, or merely disappointed
by the product they produced
on the production line
of some foreign factory,
even factoring in the bonus
they might get for being the
fastest assembler, or a reasonable
semblance thereto, and one time
I grabbed the wrong wire and
had to be defibrillated by 2
copies of Gravity’s Rainbow but
I woke up shocked but still not
understanding a word of Pynchon’s
guidebook to life during WWII.

Keith Welch lives in Bloomington, Indiana with a misanthropic cockatiel. He loves poetry and nonsense. He has poetry published in various small journals.

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.