BY COURTNEY COOK
We Skipped Spring this Year
Suddenly, the blare of August, waves above
the asphalt. There’s a ghost hanging around
my bedroom leaving hair on my pillow. I notice:
a second toothbrush beside the sink, fingerprint
bruises on my thighs too big to be my own,
a condom in the trash can. I can’t finish a cigarette,
try to pass them to no one but air. Where’s
the other mouth? To erase a memory as it unfolds;
to desire that. Isn’t it strange, the way the world
continues to expand after an end?
Summer
Cicadas burst under my bicycle tires pressed into stone
they scream high-pitched lobster boiling they cover
the walkway die beside the orange blossoms petal softness
an offering buzzing on the ground like fighting brothers
their exoskeletons still clinging to bark summer transparent
sliding over the world everything sticky and sweet fleeting
the cicadas who emerged from hibernation calculated days to fuck
and gorge themselves before morning brisk or rubber
comes to kill them to end something before it really began
a return to a world without them, the waiting again.
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Courtney Cook is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. An essayist, poet, and illustrator, Courtney's work has been seen in The Rumpus, Hobart, Lunch Ticket, Split Lip Magazine, Wax Nine, and Maudlin House, among others. Her illustrated memoir, THE WAY SHE FEELS, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in summer 2021. When not creating, Courtney enjoys napping with her senior cat, Bertie.