Cicada

When is a self its surface breaking.
My boy crushes husks with his plastic cup
 
 
 
and my thought of skin seared down
a middle, and periodic rising
 
 
 
from dirt, tunnels cored along the sides
of long roots. We pull them
 
 
 
where they cling, non-things.
Summer rattles its incomplete arc:
 
 
 
bee balm, flagrant purple, phlox
lineate the patio.
 
 
 
If a child was missing his eyes and wings,
others came with their hands
 
 
 
to guide him. Rocked all sequence
of floors in a dark house,
 
 
 
and fans whirred their sound where
he could sleep, he lay outside you.
 
  
 

Rachel Moritz is the author of Borrowed Wave (Kore Press, 2015) and five poetry chapbooks, most recently How Absence (MIEL Books, 2015). Her poems have appeared inĀ American Letters and Commentary, Aufgabe, Colorado Review, Iowa Review, TYPO, andĀ Volt. She lives with her partner and son in Minneapolis, where she teaches creative writing in the community. Learn more at www.rachelmoritz.com