Jenna Baillargeon

Cicada Summer

Like cicadas, I just want to cry and cry too:
through the whole month of June, I unleashed
gnarls of heartache from my throat
until the neighbors worried I was killing
myself nightly. Bog of my heart, long grass
of my gut, I could not pass into being more earthen
than I already was, dragged of my spit and snot,
the bile that kept me vital and part-way sane.
The death parade leaving town, headed to Calvary,
ferries my beloveds one way then refuses their return.
Each night curves blue at the edge of my window,
turning birds onto their inevitable calls, grating my ears
until the last of me gives up and lays paralyzed in frighted
dreams upon my black bed of old and budding mistakes.

Jenna Baillargeon (she/her) is a poet and freelance editor from New Hampshire. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Naugatuck River Review (as a contest finalist), Beaver Magazine, PORT smith, and elsewhere. She studied creative writing, poetry, and workshop praxis at Hampshire College.