Dry Spell, and: Eight-Legged Shadow
Rent from DeepDyve- Dry Spell, and: Eight-Legged Shadow
Dry Spell
La chicharra, Spanish for “cicada,”trills with not one but two rolling r’slike the charlado who won’t stoptalking because he has too much to say.
Fallen dead on the sidewalk, though,his song is hushed, a shell emptied out,carapace of silence, once a chorus,lacelike wings enfolded, mute supplicant.
Shell fired in terra cotta, ashen undercarriage,pale green wing sockets the residue of life,from nymph to imago, tracheae and tymbal,rhapsode of the letter i in summer’s dry season.
Muezzin droning late in the afternoonbut in a minaret upended, riven down,the faithful looking on from above,the one below desiccated, disgorged, callado. [End Page 65]
Eight-Legged Shadow
Not arachnidbut double quadruped
Stilt-like two-footedbiped in pursuit
Magic-lantern stridingperpetual-motion gaited
Ratamacue of footfall—luminescence, syncopated [End Page 66]
Daniel Simon is assistant director and editor in chief of World Literature Today magazine. He has poems recently published or forthcoming in the Adirondack Review, Poetry International, and Molossus. A Nebraska native, he lives in Norman, Oklahoma, with his wife and three daughters.
