Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper
Phaedra
Nights the stars twitch like nerves.
Those skies are like her, dead
and not dead, and the sea—
Listen
she fell in love like a lunatic.
Like a goat she would have eaten
all his clothes to see him
walk away naked.
Stephanie Pippin’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, The Iowa Review, and Ploughshares. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri. (updated 4/2009)