Nothing But Crickets

written By

After seventy-three rejections,

one for each day of summer gone by,

I know what the phrase means—

the absence of a human voice.

But to me it’s as comforting

as a Philip Glass movement,

as maddening as the cricket

that keeps my seven-year-old awake,

hidden in the rose bush, giving us

nothing but unanswered envy.

  • Michael Alcée’s work has appeared in Psychoanalytic Perspectives and Tarry. In addition to being a poet, he is a psychologist and author of Therapeutic Improvisation (Norton, 2022) and The Upside of OCD (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).

    View all posts

Share this:

Comments are closed.

Up ↑