Jessica Goodfellow
On Fearful Symmetry
In art, odd numbers are favored.
Asymmetry hangs on its axis like a pole
dancer, like a tattered banner in capricious wind.
And why is wind asymmetric while rain is symmetric?
Human faces thought as beautiful tend toward symmetry.
The bell curve ought to be the belle curve or the belle curse?
Asymmetry runs amok in the innards of the human form, but on the
outside, animal bodies are symmetric, to move forward in straight lines.
In quantum mechanics, symmetry is to remain unchanged after transformation.
A see-saw is symmetric, yet to balance dissimilar things it’s adjusted to be asymmetric.
There are more symmetrical patterns in nature than sheer random chance would allow.
Instructions to produce symmetry are easier to embed in genetic code than not.
In humans, the right lung has three lobes, and the left has two. Breath is
a kind of mortal wind, which, as previously noted, is asymmetrical.
In Japanese flower arrangement, lack of symmetry is desired.
A person, on average, takes in 20,000 breaths per day,
for about 2000 gallons of air. Those even numbers!
Shame’s asymmetrical, a lop-sided human thing
while Fate is a lockbox of wait-and-see-
saw. So, a little akilter is better?
Jessica Goodfellow’s books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press, 2017), Mendeleev’s Mandala (2015) and The Insomniac’s Weather Report (2014). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Scientific American, The Southern Review, and Verse Daily. A former writer-in-residence at Denali National Park and Preserve, Jessica lives in Japan.