“The Sounds of Night Instead”

by Koss

sick of my own morbidity—death a non-stop

loop over three loss-filled years

I turn to consider crickets as they pitch

their winged violas in September's early threat

there are 800 species—how could we know

their differences by their songs so low 

and synchronous—death-sweet and seeping 

through papered nocturne walls 

they sing together as they know things

each low-bowed wing strokes its upper half

in self-contained lovemaking

they sing, they sing their distant cricket 

symphony while the world slumbers

knowing when winter comes

it’s time to fold their tiny corpses 

into earth

whereas the stealth house crickets—so clever

defy you with their will to live all winter 

singing acapella “now—now—now” 

and “live” 

from their hidden plots

Koss (they/them/she) is a queer writer and artist with an MFA from SAIC. She has work in or forthcoming in Diode Poetry, Five Points, Hobart, Cincinnati Review, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Prelude, Chiron Review, North Dakota Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rogue Agent, Rat’s Ass Review, Kissing Dynamite, Schuylkill Valley Dispatches, and many others. She also has work in Best Small Fictions 2020 and Kissing Dynamite’s Punk Anthology. Koss just won the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Award with “My Therapist Sez” and received BOTN nominates in 2021 for fiction (Bending Genres) and poetry (Kissing Dynamite). Keep up with Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular. Her website is http://koss-works.com.