“Undulating wood” © Dr. Regina Valluzzi

[When I close my eyes…]

When I close my eyes, it is phantoms I see.
Void of mystery & illumination.
Down, down into the dismal abyss
I’m not alive until you name me,
But wake a salamander of stone.
You said you were sick of this life
You said you would be free. But
Time passed the moon was gone
That Sunday, we talked
About it, or was it another year?

Deep river, red silence that drips
With consciousness, with cogniz-
ance of the dark sisters. Perhaps it was
The Korean in me that instilled
My love in bulgogi. Murky light
The bar, a liquid music warbles

You slip by, obliterate the stars.
Loss? The trembling earth, old
Elms. I saw you stand by a tele-
phonebooth, my thought drifts
To the rainclouds in your glass,
& the semblance of your blaze.
The bleached-
out bones of the day before you came.

Seth Howard the author of two chapbooks: Out of the East and Waters from a Well. His work has appeared in Otoliths, BlazeVOX [books], unarmed journal, Big Hammer, Oddball Magazine, Chronogram, Saudade, and Elephant. He graduated from the University of Connecticut, & attended Sophia University in Tokyo for three years. In his spare time, he enjoys the practice of Zazen, watches J-drama, and studies French in New London where he lives.

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.