Watasenia scintillans, also known as the sparkling enope or firefly squid, grows to about 3 inches long and lives only one or two years. The firefly squid’s body is covered with bioluminescent cells that serve many different functions. The glowing cells on a squid’s arms help it signal and communicate with its peers. The cells […]
Science Poetry
A version of this poem appeared in Doubleback Review. The Death of the Lobster I. The death of the lobster will commence quietly. One night, she will awake and find her shell slightly too snug: The lobster’s shell has stopped growing. The lobster has not. Tomorrow, her shell will be tighter; the next day, tighter […]
In regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no other way of accounting for it… many individuals… have been pursued and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of him. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species Darwin’s Finches All right, fine, the first few birds Could not […]
At a biological field station in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeast Arizona — towering canyons and clear-running creeks — a Stanford scientist attending a poetry workshop volunteered to get up for an evening reading. He’d spent the week studying with poet Sherwin Bitsui in an environmental writing program put on by Orion magazine, using specimen […]
This is an update to a guest post that ran on December 12, 2018. A few days ago, I found the following letter from my grandfather, Donald Pearce, in my parents’ bookshelves. It was tucked into a copy of Medea which he sent to me when I was a high school sophomore. ( I was […]
On the edge of a calm sea, watching the fog come in and out like a tide, I thought it might be a nice time to revisit this comics poem from December, 2018.