Julia Balm is a poet interested in the metaphysical questions of nature and heart. She’s currently a PhD candidate at King’s College London studying outer space security and UK space policy. A recent graduate from the University of Toronto in history, art history, and creative expression, her poetry appears in The Soap Box: Volume III, the Northern Appeal,the UC Review, and in PEN International’s Creative Witnesses. After a New York childhood and Canadian bout, she currently lives in London with a small army of umbrellas and a longing for maple syrup. Spaghettification & Meatballs, published by Dancing Girl Press, is a collection of poems that blends astrophysics with consumption habits. The elaborate term, spaghettification, is the scientific term for what would happen if a human body hits the event horizon of a black hole: the body infinitely elongates like spaghetti. The duality of this theme therefore represents both the soaked redness of Italian cuisine alongside the redshift of an expanding space. Bodies stretching like space noodles, an attempt to palate cosmic consumption from our own physical disjointedness.
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Reverse Entropy
I paint my nails red because
red is the colour of revolution.
As if I’ve dipped my fingers in your blood
and found a future there that doesn’t belong to you
or with you.
Since revolution marinates in metaphysics and
simmers down to mathematics,
the only true revolutionary blood pulses through Mars.
A mixed cocktail that skips the vermouth
and goes straight for the jugular.
So I suppose this is a warning
that lipstick is the colour of revolution
and to be kissed, is to spaghettify.