Kimiko Hahn
The Railroad Worm

Daughters, nocturnal by nature, rise

when the sun declines

 

to shower and powder for evening shifts.

 

Likewise, the Railroad Worm--

not a worm but a juvenile or adult female

 

Phrixthris (the

With-Bristling-Hairs beetle)—

 

switches on a fiery red to attack or mate. 

 

The female then lays a cluster of eggs underground,

curls around them for a year. The male,

 

while not luminous

does possess wings for convenient conveyance—

 

not something I'd want to spot

at the blues joint where my youngest bartends. 

 

 

 
Found In Volume 44, No. 02
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Kimiko Hahn
About the Author

Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Foreign Bodies (W.W. Norton, 2020).  Hahn teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.