Cameron Morse

Cicada

Your tambourine may be a distraction
to the other members of our
congregation but I like the raw electrical
energy of your body growing walls

of staticky feedback out of the locust
across the street. Your kettledrum is
a wakeup call, July heat rendered
as urgency. No matter how stifling,

your mother love swaddles me in sound,
a white noise machine left on
by accident, blended into the background
it has become. Before long your solo

closes, the crescendo of shrieks
we didn’t know was the end of the song,
but for now there are no deaf ears
but the ones you deafen.

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of six collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other (Woodley Press, 2020). He holds and MFA from the University of Kansas City—Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and two children. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.