Scutellaria

147 JAMES HENRY KNIPPEN SCUTELLARIA Winner of the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Project selected by Susan Grimm Black garden pumice composes the wall from which flowers spill and stems swell. Pumice jingles if it falls. Petals: little wings seen through the translucence of a dragonfly’s own and confused with those of the monarchs inaudibly humming between pink trumpets and golden lantana. There was a song worth singing, scutellaria, a secret aria to snare, somewhere among the molten color: purple cone, snapdragon , a hedge of stone catching light from the one perennial star. They would call me a lesser singer for knowing its bushels by solely the letters on the white card calling from the xeriscape’s ledge. But I wondered who wrote such music and thought I would someday like to meet him or her, as the cypress’s trunk shed sequins, which we forget was once the most lovely word for coins. ...