1 October 2008 Volume Four
High Desert Poetry. Prose. Faultlines.
An Authoritative Guide to Mojave Desert Lepidoptera: the
Schinia Ligeae Noctuidae flies
at night. The adult moth rests on the desert Aster flowers. The female
Schinia is distinguished from the the male by size. The Schinia
Noctuidae has a pale white wingpattern, slashed with a smear of yellow,
and prefers gaslights after summer
monsoons. The Shinia Ligeae is drawn, for all the wrong reasons, to the
exterior lighting of the Texaco. The Texaco is ubiquitous. The
Noctuidae night-flying; the Noctuidae is precocious. The life
expectancy of the Noctuidae does not exceed several weeks. Even so, on
some June nights, the Shinia Ligeaa Noctuidae has been observed
breaking its body upon the damp earth after monsoon maelstros,
creekebeds, along the
gaslights that line the arroyo secco of the Mojave interior.