August sun and the unbreathing quiet of a dead cicada. I wait
and it wakes and it crawls up the shell of my ear, tells me of the
earthliving creatures who wriggle their way to a nest of woven roots
fattening themselves on tree’s milk and waiting for the Seventeen Years.
Take off / the quill in flight sheds a wing from its back like an old skin
hold it up to the light, squint between the strokes of ink and try to find any
god hiding just around the corner, or maybe
stuffed into a vein and if you look hard enough that hoary King of Cicadas
will surely unfurl and scream his song
And then sunlight catches in his hair like spindles of twisted thorn;
wooden splinters wedged into ribs / holding him up by the joists
I count twenty-three lines of streaking white and then one more
hushed clicks etched over wheezing scrapes etched over bone slate
a groan rattling against the folds of my vocal cord and
stops; dissipates into the curling mist.
That night we whispered of overripe blackberries and wedding trains
made with cicada wings, whole / untorn but torn from hard brown backs.
Air pregnant, unsaid things knocking at cartilage gates so I reach down
pull it out by its kicking legs from my throat, birthed whole into the ether
and onto his mottled tongue. when lips uncrack it peels off in flakes of
pale green / each plinking note behind that great broiling drone.
Pry open the mouth and see six legs bent on soft blistering pews
head bowed over that bellylode which grants all speech and lies warm no more,
but again now,
another Seventeen Years.
Elliot Wong
Grade: 12 / CEGEP I
Webber Academy
Calgary, AB
“There is a type of cicada – the periodical 17 year cicada – that makes an aboveground appearance every seventeen years. It has the longest life cycle of any insect, yet spends, as the name suggests, seventeen years in dark soil. There are four to six weeks in the summer months during which it emerges, mates, gives birth to the next generation. In China there existed a death rite. A jade cicada would be placed on a corpse's tongue, and symbolised rebirth. I am seventeen and Chinese. This feels like a time for ends and beginnings. ”
Bio
Elliot Wong is a Hong Kong-Canadian poet. He has been featured in various lit mags, and worships poets like Annie Dillard. In his spare time, he dabbles in mapmaking and archery.