Good Science by Stephanie Pippin
Judging by his letters I'd say this
Is a man who knows
Something of wings & extinction.
On the edge of spring,
Even before the flowers
Can rise & pucker like scars,
He names me Lonely.
What spine, what good
Science takes him far from my alchemy
Of locket & rosewater?
Here we go on thanking
God the island's small.
I wear this weave of him,
Hair at my wrist closing me
Off like January's clench
When the water rolls,
A god's eye, under ice.
What portents I decipher
From these creases.
They smell of fair weather.
They smell of jungle.
I dream of his fingers probing
Deep in the moist soil.
His hands hold orchids, hold
A nest of speckled eggs.
I write back to say—
I will unlove you, tenderly,
The way your birds learn
To unlove this ground
& leave it amazed •
Stephanie Pippin holds a M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis where she is currently a Writer-in-Residence. Her poems have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Lyric Poetry Review, and Ploughshares.
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