It is one of those forests where, if you run fast enough, barefooted and alive, you can touch off – roots and ground- shadows become branches, green acorns, and shade falling asleep until you find yourself swimming in the clouds, not kicking but push-gliding, lungs and down-soft sun breathing in and out through every pore. A bird may nibble the moss from between your toes, but other than that you’d never know you were the least bit out of place. You’ll know you have arrived when you hear my footsteps approaching from behind the ocean. They plink, maroon-gold and bronze,…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By Katelyn Sack
Katelyn Sack is a writer, painter, musician, nanny, medical botany researcher, and political economist residing in Charlottesville. Her recent work has appeared in the UK Guardian, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Science Creative Quarterly, Yankee Pot Roast, and Opium Magazine online.
PERSONAL BIOGENETIC ANALYSIS: PROSPECTUS
I want to be racially profiled, But not by a cop at a stop. I want to find out, By the hair in my snout, What my parent’s parent’s parents Were all about. I’d like to take the yarn of my DNA And compare it to the yarn they’ve been spinning – Aunt Millie says we’ve never been related To anybody who hasn’t been winning. Uncle Ferdinand buries his head in the sand When I mention the Arab in the Jew. And you shuffle and mutter, my dear darling dutter, When I mention the me in the you.
YOU MAKE ME SICK: DOES MALADAPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY CAUSE AUTOIMMUNITY
One of the most prominent environmental risk factors described for numerous diseases is chronic exposure to stressful situations. – “Chronic stress and individual vulnerability,” Schmidt MV, Sterlemann V, Müller MB, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, December 2008, 1148, 174-183. Is it really true that autoimmune diseases become more active in response to stress? There are a handful of related but distinct faulty causal inferences about stress and illness in much of the literature on autoimmune disorders. From work on stressful life events and multiple sclerosis relapse (footnote 1), to reports of stress-related onset and exacerbations of Graves…
WARM TIDINGS
Virginia, will you ask again this year Whether melting ice-caps scare his deer? Ice-water never was so warm As amid the mighty powers’ swarm. But children in Russia and Timbuktu Will get their Christmas presents, too; And sweet lead paint will not compete With family, good cheer, and meat; And submerged futures and frozen hearts Break free along with elfin workshop parts. You can also hear the piece being performed by Katelyn by clicking here
ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF EFFICIENCY
(This is the fourth installment of the The Wasteful American series. To read the others, click here, here and here) – – – How much energy is wasted as a result of fortifying foods with vitamin D instead of giving everyone a short bath of scrumptious sunlight during the day? Vitamin D3, added to most dairy products to prevent rickets and (incidentally) reduce the risks of osteoporosis, other bone disorders, and several types of cancer, surely costs something to manufacture and distribute industrially, while the human body synthesizes it naturally when skin meets sunshine. (Moonshine, on the other hand, causes…
THROWING MONEY AWAY (A MODEST PROPOSAL)
(This is the third installment of the The Wasteful American series. To read the others, click here and here) – – – In America, it is a relatively common bit of trivia that producing a penny costs more than one cent (its street value).[1] Someday, we will likely follow Canada’s syrupy example and make coins out of iron-based metal blends so that their value at the checkout counter always exceeds their value when they are melted down (illegally) for the amusement of middle schoolers or the profit of bored, pyromanic cartel heads. But really, why make Mounties of ourselves with…
ATMOSPHERIC STUDIES
I am on the side of humanity and truth. I agree to be accountable to you Because I am a sucker for a grown-up: I forget adults do not exist. I have a safety deposit box where I confess my pretexts. Among them: I have known monsters without becoming monstrous. I have longed for peace and justice at all times. I have only nine lives. I am with the firm of Yours & Mine, and in the process of conducting a routine check, I’d like you to confirm – don’t give it all away? But how will the young Know…
CONSTANT
Dark matter of my heart – you can bruise and bully, but still the impulse to take care rises like the universe that throws up its hands, and never brings them back down again. Their ascent speeds until fingers fly apart, manicured fireworks – and my heart, too, is reeling out in many universes: a field of flowers blooming in fast-forward, and the pollen blowing to France, and no replacing the eggshells of our unspoken words, and no end but some cosmic burnout. At last we’ll care too much, be overstretched, throw up our hands knowing full well our arms…
COOKING WITH ARCHIMEDES
Cool dove, white and earth-bound, ambient cheek bones fluffing until some scare brings flight, and the color scheme of bouncing light. My eyes ripple, debris settling into image. In your hair, the smell of bay bonded to purple onion, red and green tomato stripes, stoplight peppers sparking sweet and tart reactions. I inhale; my stomach growls. Just yesterday, I closed myself to this peace in kind, the non-pareils of fatigue spackling the threshold of engagement. I reflect, pixilating depth. To be enclosed on the other side, blank and dumb like winter, or fever before chill; to be falling with no…