i.

to begin there
was always the song
and there was not. the
seventeen-year cicada
swing that summer flung
from wet branches which
shook by their swelling
hiss lowing louder each night
in the chorus trees, their stiff
husks becoming skeleton
veils through which the
wind would later quip.
I spent the whole of that
summer bent over
the litter, sifting the hulls,
lifting the whole ones
from the ground with
tweezers' teeth I slid
through the back slit
where it left itself and
arranged on my desk
a scene to make them
look alive. show me a body
hollowed out like that now
and I taste the sound
all over again.

ii.

the day after she died
the trees lapped flat
on the mirror of the lake
we all watched offer
back what it was given.
given luck or a spoon then
I purged every time till
my knuckles pruned.
there was always some
-thing to offer even
my knotty knees knelt
to the pew, a prayer
urging to be emptied
once more after the last
had been taken. I left flowers
at a doorstep for a girl
I knew only by the sound
we shared through
the alley between us
when we bent over holes
with our hands in our throats.
I was a girl then. she was
a woman I know
because no girl has a body
like that. I knew one day
I'd become a woman
just like my mother. my
daughter will inherit
this body against our wills.

iii.

the earth is heating
from the inside. at just
the right warmth, the
nymphs emerge for that
lone golden fit, their
terminal thrill above ground
before death and sing until
every last female has died,
then hush. when the song dies
it dies. above ten thousand
mirrors in the desert, birds
crossing concentrated beams
of sunlight incinerate mid-flight.
they call them streamers, wisps
of white smoke ribboning
inside the blue sky. it was
the pigeon with its white
throat then, not its green bib
silvering in manic flashes
as its head spun of its neck
atop the water tower
that June that caught
my eye, the crooner
watching passersby kept
something that wanted out.
ten thousand. imagine
how many countably
infinite sets of a dream
that would make looking in.

                  (Note)