When the Swarm of Cicadas Come From Underground
Leave a commentJune 30, 2023 by The Citron Review
by Julia Johnson
Billions of them, they say.
I’ll be having a cup of milk.
Or I’ll be shaving my legs and wearing earplugs.
I’ll be lonely and waiting for everything to not be silent,
waiting for that sound that will be hard to unhear. They will come
out of the warm soil.
You will pack the suitcases and head to the farthest ocean.
I will still be listening for them even after they are here, or not here,
after I can no longer tell their orchestral sound from silence.
Julia Johnson, a native of New Orleans, is the author of three collections of poems, Naming the Afternoon (LSU Press), The Falling Horse (Factory Hollow Press), and Subsidence (Groundhog Poetry Press). Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Poetry International, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, jubilat, Tin House, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She teaches at the University of Kentucky.
The Citron Review 