Vox Populi
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Matthew Thorburn: Cicada
.
Where do the bees go in winter,
their hives shuttered in ice?
When spring rains tear down
the spider’s web, she strings up
another. It seems the same
cicadas sing in the willow leaves
each year. In spring they rise
from the dirt. When Lao Wen
died, great-grandmother placed
a jade cicada on his tongue.
You are my salt, she said
though she was already alone—
angry and alone beside
dark Lake Tai. East wind
blows, swallows come home.
Now he will stay at Lake Tai
forever. Blackened by fire
the cicada slips into her pocket:
still warm, starting to sing
—
.
Matthew Thorburn’s manuscript A Green River in Spring won the 2014 Coal Hill Review Chapbook Award.
Vox Populi 
Beautiful and poignant. I love the transition to the personal intertwining of grief, loss and then to life in her pocket. So much here. I love it.
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