A Biblical Bikini

Now above all else I think still
of the winter when we were young
those nights spent drinking
to the dawn of other dawns
& how you sat there in a bikini

because a bikini wasn’t appropriate
really to drink in one’s living room
in the icy reaches of winterlude
late at night, was it?
with your soul’s flesh exposed so indecently

it triggered goose pimples on my persona
while I toasted the fulsome blush
within your gash of cleavage
something existed like a blasphemous ruin
undetectably present to the naked eye

& compelling as a state secret
lost on the beach of pristine coke
mirroring your jaded innocence melting
as liquid nirvana in my mouth
we endeavored to swim through the ferment

wallowing within & threatening to expose
your vital statistic embedded
in your now sin-scarred flesh tattooed
with a wave of black & blue numbers
almost biblically emblazoned for eternity,

yet somehow evaporated by love’s sweat
you were an island of my lost salvation,
a quietude beneath my rowing hands
seeking the warm currents of summer
we’d never come back from

 

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active in the small press for years as editor, writer, and artist. He has poetry at ​Midnight Lane Boutique, Degenerate Literature, Green Silk Journal, In Between Hangovers, Jellyfish Whispers,​ and elsewhere. He’s been a multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

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.