Jane Zwart
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Beastly Behavior
Let’s have it, then: ordinary
ferocity. Better the blanket
spite of fire ants. Better,
if the tender are to be prey,
that the ruthlessness belong
to a creature who hungers.
Better the badger’s wordless
defiance than the cruelties
and furies even of a child.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines. In addition, she is the co-editor of book reviews for Plume; her own reviews have been published there and in The Los Angeles Review of Books.