Ars Hippoetica

For Kathleen

Sam Herschel Wein

It isn’t swimming. It’s sinking upward,
I wrote, 11 years ago, at the zoo
doing an assignment for creative nonfiction.
My first writing class, frantic, fumbling,
did I have any idea what I was doing?
I didn’t have castles. I barely had lawns.
Nothing swam in my veins. I didn’t know
to be a villain, a princess, even a dear, dear
mushroom, growing through a worried hole
in the wall, snipped with scissors once a month
but growing back. Adult hippos grow to be
gigantic, could stomp entire towers, could
take down mini-cities. Those hippos were
in the right places. Those zoos were where
I found freedom. You took me aside
after I turned in my hippo-log, and you said,
I’ve never read anything this beautiful in a long,
long time.           Today, my slippery skin reflects
the screens, zoo-monitors transport
beasts right into bedrooms, aligning our eyes
like we’ve walked the same bridges, like we’re
outside the same gates, ready for entry. I
look at you, looking at me. We’ve sunk our way
upwards. We’re soaring in skies we never
imagined. When the zoos close. When
the nature takes back. When we stop
building castles where there used to be
streams. Will I have skyed enough to have
lessons from the stars for you, in return?
Dear hippos. Dear teacher. Dearly readers
who have said, keep describing this,
describe this long past the time we’re even
recognizable, except the shapes of our
bodies beneath the wayward trees

Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a lollygagging plum of a poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. A 2022 Pushcart Prize winner, their third chapbook, Butt Stuff Flower Bush, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. He co-founded and edits Underblongand is poetry co-editor for Grist Journal. They have work forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. See what they're up to at samherschelwein.com