Vestigial 

In Vestigial, Aja Couchois Duncan brings together creation myth and convergent evolution. The collection opens with “algal mats and bryophytes” and moves on to “cambrian explosion” and compound eyes. By attending with precise observation and wonder to the scientific materiality that provokes the intensely human experiences of puberty, lust, and “Let’s make a baby,” Duncan builds a braided chronology of genetic, emotional, geological, and cosmic events that intersect to render a temporality that feels strangely out of time. The language of “continental crust” and “acidification” is balanced by an ongoing love story centered around human relationships, and this asymmetrical scaling is one of the book’s strengths.

Any literature where geological time must be conceived of within language, narrative, and human comprehension can be difficult to write convincingly. This is a formal challenge as our stories require tight settings and are constrained by what is possible, even with a “suspension of disbelief.” Duncan thwarts these literary devices and avoids the premise of chronological time altogether by presenting evolution as a love story and a feast: “Insects dine on green foliage” and “Mammoths swing their long, curved tusks.” The “becoming” of Vestigial is indeed lively, entangled, and unpredictable.