This is How It Begins Every Summer

when cicadas claw to the surface
and break out of their brown shells

crushed by squirrels running
after each other’s tails round and round

the large wood oak at the end
of a cornfield in rural America.

My daddy and I rest
with glasses of sweet iced tea

listening to those males flex their tymbals
calling their red-eye sirens high up in the trees.

Chris Wood is a lease analyst by day, student by night, and writer in between. Chris lives in Tennessee with her husband and three dogs. She is currently earning her bachelor’s degree and has poetry published in Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Journal, and other publications. She won second prize in the 2016 CWG Spring Contest for her poem, Thus Your Live Grows.

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crushed by squirrels running after each other’s tails round and round

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