What The Cicadas Are Singing – Carly Maria Hubbard

I keep coming back

to that VW bug

glued to the bottom

of the horizon,

back lit by a sticky

sunset on an orange

summer night,

the blistering air

humming with the far off murmur

of what might have been traffic

or static from her eyelids

or the color of irises

in the quickening shadows,

counting pulse points

in the bodacious way stars appear

from a Midwest murkiness—

one by one, spelling out stories

but never telling their end

Carly Maria Hubbard

Carly Maria Hubbard earned her BA in Creative Writing from DePaul University. Her poetry and flash fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Hooligan Magazine, formercactus, Flash Fiction Magazine, Porridge Magazine and Pink Plastic House. She is an accidental one-time winner of the Uptown Poetry Slam and often suspects that the spirit of lucille clifton is trying to contact her. Carly is a poetry reader for Homology Lit. Come play with her on twitter @carly_maria