Cicadas and Citrus by Miriam Spada

Cicadas and Citrus

by Miriam Spada

My beloved’s house holds a chorus of crickets. They live in his old jean pockets with rusted keys and Timber Wolf snuff. A whining breath

between bodies, a disconcerted harmony rings like trees whistling off the side of US-27 as 18-wheelers wind to Georgia. Dusk

Singing Cicadas wake him in the mornings to drink his spit and eat the sap from the fleshy wood of our magnolia headboard

grooving into softwood to echo their own song. My beloved’s voice is orange basil tea, a bitter citrus. Cicadas feed on this knowing

he will speak of the yellow tickseed flowers in the medians until his nose is out of joint and he swallows his own tongue. Their courtship

songs of buzzing zits tell him it is time for the big shells of bodies to bang tymbals and grind legs under the sheets while I sit on the floor and chant Psalms

to the Gregorian rhythm of their ancient songs. My lover scratches his name into the headboard and I hum, sway, and pray to the God of locusts

that one day I will lay under clean white sheets and the cicadas will no longer eat, they will sing to me and turn their heads to look

and whisper: Talitha Kumi and my lover will swallow his tongue again, roll off of the bed and I will watch him feed on orange basil and finally sleep through

the night until I wake to his quiet hums and softwood song with the morning sun beating on my back, hearing them all sing to me: rise little girl arise.