Jessica Goodfellow

Green as Fixative, When Nothing Else Stays Fixed

3D map of a mouse’s neural network
Jackson-Pollocking in citrines,
in cyans, and magentas. Zoom in
to a firecracker burst of brain:
synapses shimmering red and blue,
neurons flaming the same green
as the shivering northern lights. Zoom out                
to solar winds in pantomime with millions
of oxygen atoms, excited but in decay,
in return to their—zoom in—ground state.

This luminous night-sky green, chosen
to stain the brain slice on the glass slide
is the same harlequin green as a glass
bead off my broken bracelet, given me by
my love that so pleased me to see again-
st the inside of my wrist, once—my wrist
(zoom in) itself veined faintly green,
and throbbing, excited but in decay, returning
imperceptibly, inevitably, to the ground       
state.   

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Jessica Goodfellow’s poetry books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press, 2017), Mendeleev’s Mandala and The Insomniac’s Weather Report. A former writer-in-residence at Denali National Park and Preserve, she’s had poems in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Scientific American, Verse Daily, Motionpoems and Best American Poetry. Jessica lives and works in Japan. www.jessicagoodfellow.com