The Saturn and Sphinx Moths of the Upper Midwest

Let me speak of The Saturn

and Sphinx Moths of the Upper Midwest.

It’s a map-sized Pocket Guide

laminated in a formaldehyde

of plastic that I’ve kept between my

Handbook to the Projectile Points

of Iowa and The Selected Lyrics of Háfiz.

Goes to show that we’re all a bit

edited. Even The Saturn and Sphinx

Moths of the Upper Midwest is

cut to its completeness. The Vashti

sphinx moth flies to the light

bulb over our heads. The Death’s

Head Hawk moth surfaces

in the Silence of the Lambs, alights

on the lips of Jodie Foster.

The Spiny Oakworm. The Honey

Locust. The Virginia Creeper.

That Gothic moth’s an imposter.

The Polyphemus moth has four

eyes yet is named after the Cyclops

Odysseus blindsided by calling

himself “Nobody.” A four-eyed

Cyclops moth is nobody, too.

Saturn moths are not a single species,

but moths swallowed by what

a system accrued. The “eyes” on

the wings of the Io moth are equal

to the widening inner aperture that

asks what kind of insect is prayer.

Close your eye, kid, and stare into Ovid.

Zeus transforms Io into a heifer

to hide her in plain sight. The cow

jumps into the moon like Li Po.

Anonymously carved into Wikipedia’s

temple of light is the maxim: “there

are over 160,000 kinds of moths, many

of which are yet to be described.”

The Abbot’s sphinx. The Achemon.

Multimedia Lepidoptera. The Pink moth

denudes as it detaches from the synaptic

flash that cocoons it, ingesting

the muslin over its origins as Saturn

consumes the Sphinx. I once saw

an empty parking lot outside Fargo

deified by falling snow. I recall

the Upper Midwest as a system

of riddles and gods present

in the fluorescents of gas stations lit

like ashrams in which we might

dissolve our transverse orientation

to the things of this earth.