Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Sara Pennington
Year of the Locust (II)
We’d been wringing our hands
for decades, it seemed,
squinting toward that noisy year. We’d hoarded
all the best words: “Horology”
for instance, and “the universal whorl,”
“the ratcheting racket,”
“nothing but flit and husk.”
Those little Lazaruses made us born-again
believers.
We couldn’t help but want the Resurrection.
We couldn’t help but want to swarm.
We were growing sick
of visual imagery: so much sepia tone & moon glow,
so many skeins of hand-spun yarn.
We’d been wanting the infinite
ticks and shrieks, the cacophonous shirring, the whirring.
Most of us barely heard a thing.
Most of us heard
only the usual orchestra, jack-dawed over the rhythm
of the house band.
Half of us were praising Brood Ex,
the other half insisting “Brood Ten rocks!”
Either way,
no one was really listening. Either way, we wanted to press
our bodies together; we couldn’t help
but get up and dance.
178 ◆ Crab Orchard Review