The Return
Abigail Warren

My first year in high school,
the year the locusts showed up,
it was all mini-skirts and legs,
black eyeliner and greasy lipstick,
Jerry Rubin’s Steal This Book,
a plentitude of weed, cigs, parties
where kids just found a corner to make out,
or stick their fingers inside someone;
the teachers were afraid of us,
so when Bobby Rucci put 30 cicadas in Miss McKay’s
pocketbook, we waited for teacher’s break,
when she didn’t return, I was afraid we killed her.
All of us were looking for sex, we too,
had been waiting a long time, like Darlene Vanhorne
with makeup like a movie star,
she said fuck you to the home ec teacher,
grabbed the chips and went into the bathroom,
we followed like a cult,
strength in numbers, a swarm,
lit up smokes, opened the chips and repeated fuck her.
That girl-faced wingless nymph, she too, disappeared in the
underground, just outside of the new suburbs,
where we’d go out those back roads
with no street lights, sidewalks, just dark woods,
and turn the headlights out, see how far,
how fast we would go before someone screamed
stop.