05-28-2017, 09:26 AM
Thank you, all who helped me with this - it is in EAB Publishing's Midnight Circus, 2017 Summer issue, out soon.
Final edit:
Cicada summer
At dawn they wake,
struggle up through the earth,
emerge into the light
exhausted, clinging helplessly.
Thousands have moved as one.
Twigs and reeds sag under the weight
of larva clustered like fruit.
Their shells darken and split,
reveal glittering black gargoyles
with red pinhead eyes who crawl free
leaving skins like shucked gloves.
Wings unfold, pump,
stretch and set. Then
the din begins - calling,
they reproduce their pain:
agony of light, helplessness,
ruptured skin, birth shock,
consciousness, loneliness,
all given voice until the air shakes
and shrieks like an unoiled machine.
Disguised inside that serenade,
drifting in and out of focus;
the voice of a faint angelic choir
like the one in St. Augustine’s cathedral
that so frightened you as a child.
Final edit:
Cicada summer
At dawn they wake,
struggle up through the earth,
emerge into the light
exhausted, clinging helplessly.
Thousands have moved as one.
Twigs and reeds sag under the weight
of larva clustered like fruit.
Their shells darken and split,
reveal glittering black gargoyles
with red pinhead eyes who crawl free
leaving skins like shucked gloves.
Wings unfold, pump,
stretch and set. Then
the din begins - calling,
they reproduce their pain:
agony of light, helplessness,
ruptured skin, birth shock,
consciousness, loneliness,
all given voice until the air shakes
and shrieks like an unoiled machine.
Disguised inside that serenade,
drifting in and out of focus;
the voice of a faint angelic choir
like the one in St. Augustine’s cathedral
that so frightened you as a child.