Ilana Zweschi, God Is In Those Cakes (Statistics). Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, 2017.
Biology Lesson
by Sally Bliumis-Dunn
When she looked through
the microscope she saw
nothing but a bright circle
until she turned the knobs to focus
on the specimen of pond water—
an amoeba, cytoplasm churning
like liquid sand inside the colorless
ectoplasm, and smaller paramecia
swarming. She thought she’d be bored
looking at the slide but instead
felt unsettled, as though
something had been taken—
her frequent swims
in her grandmother’s pond, the warm
slab of granite where she’d dry
on her towel, water
beading on her arms and legs,
filled, no doubt, with similar
tiny creatures. She had always felt
alone, safe on that rock, away
from the bickering in the house.
Maybe a squirrel or rabbit
in the field grass, the only ones
near her, all afternoon.
Published January 19th, 2020
Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches Modern Poetry at Manhattanville College and offers individual manuscript conferences at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems appeared in New Ohio Review,On the Seawall, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, PLUME, Poetry London, the NYT, PBS NewsHour, upstreet, The Writer’s Almanac, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, and Ted Kooser’s column, among others. In 2002, she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Her two books, Talking Underwater and Second Skin were published by Wind Publications in 2007 and 2010. Galapagos Poems published by Kattywompus Press in 2016. Her third full-length collection, Echolocation, was published by Plume editions Madhat Press in March of 2018 and was long-listed for the Julie Suk Award for Best Book of Poetry in 2018. www.sallybliumisdunn.com
Ilana Zweschi is an artist working in Seattle, Washington. She attended Skidmore College, graduating summa cum laude in 2011, where she was an Art Major and a Mathematics Minor. In 2014 she earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the State University of New York at Albany and received the Departmental Thesis award for her oral defense. She is currently represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle and is a member of the artist-run gallery SOIL. Her work has been featured in the No. 145 Pacific Coast Issue of New American Paintings, a Youngspace interview, and 52 Critical Painters blog. Notable group shows include: Tiger Strikes Asteroid Flatfile in New York, By and By at Durden and Ray in Los Angeles, Out of Sight: A Survey of Contemporary Art in the Pacific Northwest and Time and Space at the CICA Museum in South Korea. In addition to a studio practice, Zweschi is an instructor at Cornish College of the Arts and various other colleges around Seattle.