by Ben Kline
In his paisley handkerchief tied to his walking stick like a windsock
Grandpa caught cicadas. Most, he beheaded
and dipped in chocolate syrup
he fixed up with his flask,
chewing until he spit their legs out,
but one, he held close to my face, its persimmon eyes looking back,
wings tympanic on his fingers, on its mission
to cover every oak and eat every leaf,
to croon all day and night, making love
before another seventeen years of sleep.
Imagine being so insistent and momentarily eternal,
though I knew from the 1986 World Book they laid eggs
and died, hatched nymphs tunneling dirt until heaven called.
Like me, they knew silence equals death,
the fever of kissing another boy again
after last night’s dance. I wanted
their patience, and when Grandpa released the bug
I returned to dissecting a groundhog in the yard,
Grandpa repeating esophagus, adrenal,
duodenum around his toothpick,
asking if every cecum glowed. I flipped my knife
and sliced the sac, freeing dozens of eyes and legs
yellow with xylem sap and bile. Imagine
being so doomed and simultaneously
resilient.
Hailing from the farmland valleys of the west Appalachian foothills, Ben Kline (he/him) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. A poet, storyteller and Madonna podcaster, Ben is the author of the chapbooks Sagittarius A* and Dead Uncles, as well as the forthcoming full-length collections It Was Never Supposed to Be (Variant Literature) and Twang (ELJ Editions.) His work has appeared in Poet Lore, Copper Nickel, Pithead Chapel, MAYDAY, Florida Review, Southeast Review, DIAGRAM, Poetry, and other publications.
Emerge Literary Journal 