Celeste

Our Lady of Flowering Marvel

Brad Baumgartner

 

ISBN 978-1-952419-03-4          102 pages         $16.00

 

Celeste unfurls internally. An invaginated text which opens the reader into myriad mystic realms with playful lyricism (misty jism). Here the I dissolves only to reappear, offering space for the reader to reach through the illusion of separate self and enter a trembling, trebling All, agape:

 

for now is only the complete immersion in Everything,

the tantric totality of all possible worlds

eviscerating themselves

into an instantaneous Now,

the you you thought you were

that has become an I without a “me”:

a beautiful minx

perching on the tip

of a piercing razor blade

made from nothing but pure,

absolute Love.

 

—Heather Woods, author of Light Bearing

Brad Baumgartner is a writer, theorist, and Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Penn State. Recent creative work has appeared in Burning House Press, X Ray Literary Magazine, Vestiges, and others. Current projects include a hybrid work entitled Stylinaut, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award, and a play called the –tempered mid·riff. He is the author of Quantum Mechantics: Memoirs of a Quark (The Operating System, 2019). Weird Mysticism, a monograph, is forthcoming from Lehigh UP in 2021.