At The Bottom of the Whiskey Bottle

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Kendal Taylor

 

It’s a Tuesday night,

and the cicadas have awoken

for the encore of their evening act,

white noise that seems to slip through the hole in the wall

my mother told me was an accident.

 

Sometimes I wish I could communicate with the cicadas,

to tell them to sing louder,

or even invite them inside for tea.

 

But I have my sister to play tea with.

We sometimes play in the upstairs bedroom

where the cicadas are a little less heard…

 

It’s where everything seems to be a little less heard.

 

It’s a Tuesday night,

and my dad returns home.

The cicadas suddenly become quiet,

maybe put to sleep by the intoxication in his breath.

 

It escapes his lips and it floods the kitchen.

My sister advises us to seek higher ground,

as that’ll keep us from drowning,

so we run upstairs and decide to play tea.

 

I would ask dad to play and have tea with us,

but he seems to have already had enough to drink.

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Kendal Taylor graduated from Rutgers in May 2021, majoring in Communication with a specialization in Public Relations. She lives in East Brunswick, NJ, and likes to spend her free time writing poetry and listening to music.

Kendal wrote this poem in Ben Purkert’s Poetry course during the Fall 2020 semester. Purkert selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.