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Eudocima Phalonia

by Jane Zwart | From Issue 26 (Spring 2024)

One way to tell 
the earth from hell 
is to remind oneself: 
for every narcissist

there is a creature
so oblivious to its beauty
that, for it, a mirror
would be a terror.

For every dictator
there is a caterpillar—
jet, cut from velvet, 
splattered with nebulae—

whom metamorphosis
makes common, just
a sweet tooth, a moth
on whose mudcloth 

culottes it is written
that a strongman’s arms
can be snapped in half,
his flex turned curlicue.

Jane Zwart

Poet Jane Zwart sits at a desk and looks slightly behind her at the camera over her shoulder. She has large, clear-framed glasses and holds a pen in her hand, an elbow resting on her desk.

Jane Zwart’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines.

Author Note:

I first saw a photo of eudocima phalonia in its stunning caterpillar stage thanks to Twitter (back when it was still Twitter) and, smitten, I hunted up a photo of the moth at the end of its metamorphosis. The moth looks homely by comparison. All of which got me to thinking about 1) how extravagant some creatures’ strange beauty is compared to human beings’ (though certainly we’re given to preening more extravagantly than most), and 2) the possible differences in the ways other creatures and human beings bear their respective transformations.

Listen:

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