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Column 857

Reckless Sonnet No. 8

08.23.2021

Kimiko Hahns father was born and raised in Wis­con­sin. A place that has now become part of his daughter’s imag­i­na­tion. She her­self is a woman of many arrivals and depar­tures, and thus a woman fas­ci­nat­ed by the com­plex mean­ing of home”, as she shows here in this son­net. The life-cycle of the cica­da offers a splen­did oppor­tu­ni­ty for her to speak of child­hood, mat­u­ra­tion and change as part of the par­ent-child experience.

Reckless Sonnet No. 8

My father, as a boy in Milwaukee, thought
the cicada's cry was the whir from a live wire--
not from muscles on the sides of an insect
vibrating against an outer membrane. Strange though
that, because they have no ears, no one knows why
the males cry so doggedly into the gray air.
Not strange that the young live underground sucking sap from tree roots
for seventeen years. A long, charmed childhood
not unlike one in a Great Lake town where at dusk
you'd pack up swimsuit, shake sand off your towel
and head back to the lights in the two-family houses
lining the streets. Where the family sat around the radio.
And the parents argued over their son and daughter
until each left for good. To cry in the air.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2002 by Kimiko Hahn, "Reckless Sonnet No.8." from The Artist’s Daughter, (W.W Norton & Company, 2002). Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher.  Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 858
Column 856