The Emergence of the Brood III

In the Emergence of Brood III, Gabriella Torres uses the life cycle of the seventeen- year cicadas as a vehicle to explore ideas of home-a home that perhaps may or may not have ever existed. Known as the Iowan Brood, Torres takes on the collective voice of the emerging cicadas and re-imagines them as teenagers on the verge of adulthood in a summer of desire and song. Through their voices, the poems weave a narrative of discovery and loss to create what Gina Myers describes in her foreword as "a haunted poetry.... where the ghosts of the past and the ghosts of what could have been co-mingle."