after the drawing “Eyes of the Drosophila melanogaster,” by Cornelia Hesse-Honneger
You lay your hapless eggs
in sweetly fermenting peach,
then hover—pencil dots
of irritation. Pests! Your gifts are few:
wondrous compound eyes
wing beats faster than a hummingbird’s—
ah yes—and genes akin to ours.
The lab workers call you
Quasimodo mutants: leg growing
from leg, wings curled, misshapen
or asymmetrical, big head, small
head, no head. Nothing
where the brick-red eye should be,
or a wing—a wing!—sprouting
from the other, mutations
unearned except through the fortunate
brevity of your fruit fly lives.
Lowly flies, subject to a force
you cannot comprehend:
manipulated, irradiated. What
have we not done to you?
Designer flies: creatures amnesiac.
Neurotic. Addicted. Insomniac.
Harbingers of Parkinson’s or Huntington’s.
Homologous to us, yet still
the Not-us: dark-bellied dew lover—
our secret dread incarnate.
—
CJ Muchhala’s work has been published in New Poetry from the Midwest and other anthologies, in print and on-line journals including Gyroscope Review, WordPeace and Thimble, displayed regionally in collaborative art/poetry exhibits and nominated for the Best of the Net and twice for the Pushcart Prize.
