Iridology: A Mapping / Jishin-no-ben by Lee Ann Roripaugh

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1.

Could there be a more beautiful name, 

ocelli, for the false eyespots tattooed

on the wings of silk moths? Automeris io 

with her blue-black eyes on butter-yellow 

hind wings—blown-out pupils flecked 

with a scattershot of stars like a wormhole

accordioning open into the cosmos. Is it

to distract predators from the vulnerable,

fur-tipped succulence of her thorax, or to

startle them into retreat by gazing back?

2.

Iridology the visual mapping of eyes:

the colors of irises, the kaleidoscopic patterns

in nerve bundles called trabeculae, the study of

rings, flecks, discolorations to diagnose illness,

divine futures. If predators can be tricked

into believing in false eyespots, and if iridology

is now thought of as quackery, what about

iridologists: if they’re fakers, what fortunes

and divinations will they tell, gazing

into the trompe l’oeil of compelling ocelli?

3.

The small emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia,

a flourish of pink ermine soft and plush

about the shoulders, with sunset-colored

hind wings, gazes owlishly out from

four false eyes so realistic there’s even

a small refraction, a tiny white glint,

as if painted by hand, reflecting light from

each iris. Meanwhile, the Atlas moth,

Atticus atlas, lifts its wings to reveal a pair

of raised cobra heads, waiting to strike

4.

As a child, you constantly monitored 

your mother’s eyes: the dilated, obsidian

pupils, oil slick and empty, irises circled

by ever-tightening tourniquets of almost

blue that would semaphore the onset of

her sudden borderline rages. You’d watch

her eyes, tongueing the air around her like a

wary snake, waiting for the taste of copper,

a chemical shift in the molecules. You didn’t

have a name for this then: hypervigilance.

5.

You distrust excessive performativity: the broken

wing held up too high, superlatives sheathing

a sharpened edge. You can sense when an eyelid

blinks open to coolly assess your response.

The horror of a peacock snapping open like a gaudy

fan, watching you watching it with all its false eyes.

And yes, you know what you are: a peacock, too,

but a ghost—photonegative, reactive, shuttering open

your snow-white tail again and again like some phantom

doppelganger—all mirror, all dumbstruck aperture.

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Lee Ann Roripaugh’s fifth volume of poetry, tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019), was named a “Best Book of 2019” by the New York Public Library, selected as a poetry Finalist in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards, cited as a Society of Midland Authors 2020 Honoree in Poetry, and was named one of the “50 Must-Read Poetry Collections in 2019” by Book Riot. She was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. The South Dakota State Poet Laureate from 2015-2019, Roripaugh is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.

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10 October 2022