The Cicada Girl As Eve

The cicada girl comes to Sherman in a dream,
her sighs are made of flesh and blood
and linger all night long.

When you hang your heart on the crescent moon,
it’s beating will make it rock
until it spills you from the chair.

Sherman is like every other man,
he puts on his pants
two legs at a time,

he takes the trash out,
he lets the dog out,
and lets the same dog back in.

He thinks of the cicada girl all day long,
between the present, past and future---
this machine will spit it out,

virgin Eve, Julius Cesar, Cesar salad,
Langston Hughes, the torture in Iraq,
this machine just doesn’t care,

you ask it to do something
and it will, no questions asked,
no answers questioned,

split, re-split, joined, unjoined,
navel to navel, poem sweating against poem
before colors were invented.