Unfortunately, the mayfly lives a mere twenty-four hours sodoesn’t get to enjoy the award for very long.A representative mayfly isn’t flown to Oslo to attenda lavish ceremony and give a short speechthanking parents and colleagues who believed in him duringthe four-to-six hours of a difficult adolescence.A mayfly’s love life consists of one liaison above a pond.So no time to meet someone else with a cuter thorax.No time for treachery and lies, no time for sleepless nightsor passionate reunions in the rain.They are born, they mate, lay eggs, die by the thousands.Every spring fragile bodies are swept off of windshieldsas commuters wonder how much longer they can make this drive day after day, month after month, year after year.
“Danish Mayfly Named Insect of the Year”
Ron Koertge
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“Danish Mayfly Named Insect of the Year” is from Pandora’s Kitchen by Ron Koertge (Red Hen Press 2025). Used with permission from the publisher.
“Yes, Ron Koertge is a bit of a magician. He transforms master narratives (fairy tales, Bible stories, Greek myths, horror movies, and more) into poems rich with contradictions, role reversals, juicy ambiguities, and as Emily Dickinson put it, 'truth’s superb surprise.' Moral certainties and stereotypes vanish in these sly/subversive, satiric/tender, achingly funny/humane poems. Koertge creates brilliant mashups of ancient and contemporary human frailties (spoiler alert: they remain the same across history) reminding us that the gods, monsters, aliens, and heroes whose stories we thirst for inhabit us all.”
—Amy Gerstler, author of Index of Women
“It appears that Ron Koertge will not rest until he has toppled every icon in Western civilization. Here it’s Pandora, Ishmael aboard the 'Peapod,' and even Fanny Brawn who get flipped on their heads. If only his poems were not so witty, gently sarcastic, and deeply warm-hearted, they would be mere shenanigans. Instead, they are poetry at its best, causing his readers to laugh, think, and feel anew.”
—Billy Collins, former US poet laureate
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