Anne Yarbrough
Cicada
What’s left of you nestles my palm,
weightless husk
once birthed headfirst,
juice-slicked and stunned,
patient while the caul slipped away
and fresh blood welled
in your wing—
little beat wait little beat.
What it's like to be born,
how the molecules push apart, hard,
cutting across the field.
And maybe you did loft
to a high branch,
as you imagined
you would while you slept underground.
I try to imagine you
imagining this.
You could have had that
for a while,
unseen in the hot rafters,
your canticle unfurling down the alley
as clerestory light clefts shadowed aisle,
while girls licking ice cream cones
murmur down the alley,
not looking up,
slipping through pattern —
shade halo shade.
Anne Yarbrough's (she/her) first collection, Refinery (Broadkill River Press), received the 2021 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Gargoyle, CALYX Journal, Cider Press Review, SWWIM Every Day, Spillway, and elsewhere. Her poem, "Smoke," was a finalist in The 2023 Best Spiritual Literature Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry (Orison Press). She's a 2023 Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellow. She lives along the lower Delaware River, which was once called Lenapewihittuck.
Return to March 2024 Edition
What’s left of you nestles my palm,
weightless husk
once birthed headfirst,
juice-slicked and stunned,
patient while the caul slipped away
and fresh blood welled
in your wing—
little beat wait little beat.
What it's like to be born,
how the molecules push apart, hard,
cutting across the field.
And maybe you did loft
to a high branch,
as you imagined
you would while you slept underground.
I try to imagine you
imagining this.
You could have had that
for a while,
unseen in the hot rafters,
your canticle unfurling down the alley
as clerestory light clefts shadowed aisle,
while girls licking ice cream cones
murmur down the alley,
not looking up,
slipping through pattern —
shade halo shade.
Anne Yarbrough's (she/her) first collection, Refinery (Broadkill River Press), received the 2021 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Gargoyle, CALYX Journal, Cider Press Review, SWWIM Every Day, Spillway, and elsewhere. Her poem, "Smoke," was a finalist in The 2023 Best Spiritual Literature Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry (Orison Press). She's a 2023 Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellow. She lives along the lower Delaware River, which was once called Lenapewihittuck.
Return to March 2024 Edition