Post-Haze

by James Kwapisz

The summer came and went like a whisper
you couldn’t decipher, could not care
to decrypt, for it was not for you
outlying, eavesdropping on some strangers’
banter muddled under the hum of cicadas
clamoring in the sun, articulating
their secret mystic rituals
gesticulating themselves out their skins
writhing in rhythms already written
all to echo on their antecedents’
form, their origin, their destination;
spasmodic, they seize their intermittent
season.

Deaf to the whole rigmarole, you cling
hollow to a sprig of grass or a fray of branch
whimpering on the wind like the shell
cast from its host, like the casing
of a legume long since consumed
cleaves to the tooth and coats its youth
with cavity, with depression.

The cicadas scream in the sun
as their husks hold fast to some vain
redemption as the cicadas scream carpe diem!
as an old lover’s mandibles pass the curd
to the tongue, as the fangs dull and rot
as the cicadas die in the sun.