GEO:1161, Spring 2020

by Maggie Nipps

I remember a trip to a quarry 

back home—a deep bowl 

of loose rock. My mother passed down

to me a sedimentary stone 

and tried to identify the layers. 

Last month, my professor handed me 

locally found mammoth teeth

to study their dentition. 

Deckle-edged; herbivorous. 

My friends are going

to the Devonian Fossil Gorge.

I’ve studied it, but never

in person—only held the calcified 

sea lilies that imbed

that horizontal exposure. 

They ask if I’d like to come

walk the dry riverbed. I’d like to, yes; 

I need sensation, to touch

the tart edges of the limestone.

But I cannot face the human 

contact. The uncertainty.

Tomorrow, my mother’s spine is being biopsied

to study a fragment of her cancerous

bones. It was that or her liver, but the spine,

less invasive than soft tissue.

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Maggie Nipps is a poet and playwright from Wisconsin, currently studying at the University of Iowa. Her work appears in Dream Pop Journal and she co-edits the lit mag Afternoon Visitor.