of fat Dogs & amorous insects by Jeremy Nathan Marks

All the DC Area Dogs

with the dumb luck to be alive

when the seventeen year gravy train

of a billion billion cicadas of Brood X arrive

The House Dogs and Senate Dogs

The Street Dogs, Mad Dogs, and Lap Dogs

Dogs of the Homeless

and Dogs in the Congress

Nearly every Dog growing fat

on the walking clicking droning

flying junk food popping

out of the ground

But beware, Dogs:

cicadas have a sense of purpose

They aim to get on up to the tippy top

of local trees and make love not war

among walnuts and beechnuts and acorns

Cicada haters say Brood X shall not replace us!

We are the soil’s true sons and daughters

But the biological truth is

the last cicada does

what the first cicada did

long before the Dog Days

That is,

they indulge in sex

to preserve the race

because the world is

a nexus of scatology

and genetics.

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Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent poetry and prose appears/is appearing in New Reader Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Unlikely Stories, Bluepepper, 365 Tomorrows, Dissident Voice, Jewish Literary Journal, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Boog City, Chiron Review, New Verse News, and Ginosko Review.