cicada/corpse picture show
*cw - death, decay, bugs, bodily fluids
Mallory Payne
inside the cicada
is the last picture
show in georgia.
the film flicks
across its hollow abdomen.
all the voices are just cicada
songs so i gotta try to put the
story together on my own.
it only ever makes sense when
the blurry, super eight shot of a lake
i used to know flashes like
moth wings. all is quiet
except for the cicada.
i can almost smell the dyin’
magnolias in the
cicada guts.
they smell like bile and
cigarettes and sewage.
i can die inside the
cicada, the two of us bloatin’ up with
necrotic gas, invitin’ the maggots
to watch the last
picture show.
Mallory Payne (they/she) is a mildly unsettling grad student and poet currently located in Washington, D.C. They are an enthusiast of the weird, the vile, and the sickening. When they aren't writing, they enjoy diy music, poetry, and film and napping with their cat, Worm. Their work can also be found in BULLSHIT Lit and HAD and they can be found shouting into the void at @paynemal_ on twitter.