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thirteen ways of hearing a cicada (with apologies to wallace stevens) - andrew careaga



A rare dual brood emergence of cicadas is happening this spring, and it will not happen for another 221 years, according to entomologists. These insects can create sounds that often hit 90-100 decibels, which is louder than a hair dryer.


“The Year of the Periodical Cicadas,” The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture, March 26, 2024


I

The first parties emerge

Like scouts, inspecting the land.

You hear a whir, a hiss, the sound

Of one winding a mechanical clock

Or a music box.

A small intrusion

Into the noises of mid-spring: 

the chirping robins, yodeling cardinals,

hammering woodpeckers.


II

Alone, on its back

At the tip of the paw of

A curious cat.

It buzzes as it’s nudged,

As it’s sniffed, observed,

And flails as the inspector cat

Loses interest and

Saunters off.


III

On a morning walk,

Along a sidewalk splattered

With wounded mulberries,

Swollen blue-black, purple, red

Things, smashed into the

Concrete canvas like 

Splotches of a Jackson Pollock painting.

The chants, incongruous, cacophonous, 

Unsettling. 

Raucous.


IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and billions of cicadas

Are one.


V

In an outburst,

Farther down the path,

A murmuring, an uproar,

Where the catalpa tree blossoms

Lie crushed on the concrete,

Battered by last night’s rainstorm,

And the steps of dogs and people.


VI

Like a headache

As you strain to ignore

Their incessant song 

To hear your soft-spoken neighbor

Whisper the latest confidential matters.


VII

As a steady thrum

In the late afternoon heat,

The volume rising

With the humidity.


VIII

In the car, on a drive

Through town

To the grocery store

Or Walmart.

Windows open, you hear

Their buzzsaw song rising

As you near,

Then crescendo and fade,

Their sound distorted

By the Doppler effect.


IX

In the distance, it seems,

As you stroll mid-morning

On a cloudy day, their 

Individual whirs and chirps now

Growing into synchronicity,

A uniformity, higher in pitch,

The band finally coming together but

It’s like the sound of aliens

Invading the peaceful town

In a 1950s sci-fi movie,

In black and white.


X

An intrusion.

An invasion.

An interruption.

An interregnum.


XI

As a triumph,

The trumpets of

The conquistador bugs.


XII

As invisible motorcycles, 

Little Hell’s Angels

Rumbling through the Sturgis

Of your neighborhood.


XIII

As a familiarity,

A noise as common as

The stifling Missouri summer

Air it travels through, and

At sunset, a symphony that

Accompanies the distant hues

Of rainbow sherbet clouds,

Red and orange and green

Bruises on the sky.




Andrew Careaga is a former public relations and marketing executive who lives and writes from his home in Rolla, Missouri, USA. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Fan, Southwinds, Paragraph Planet, Red String, and Bulb Culture Collective. He has creative non-fiction scheduled for publication in July 2024 in Club Plum Literary Journal. He survived the Great Cicada Invasion of 2024.

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