Issue #26, April, 2002 : -- -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12
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Miriam Sagan

Florida: the Waterbird Detail from "Secret Course" Florida is New Jersey's Lost paradise Garden with an alligator. Something with teeth-- Eve's pearly whites Punctured apple flesh, Look what we have-- Strip mall, pesticide, a rude Customer undertipping the waitress. Florida is Where New Jersey goes Not after death, but before-- Runaways, failed dope dealers, Old Ukrainian Jews Who want to die by the sea But inexplicably live on. Art deco moon, Arabian palm. I have to say It bothered me The large hand-painted sign By the Everglades Proclaiming: Robert is here. My first husband Robert Has been dead for five years But I stop anyway Just in case I've been mistaken. But I don't find him among papayas, coconuts Carved in crabbed, ugly, shrunken heads Or a good price on conch shells Or something green and shriveled By the cash register Claiming to be chocolate pudding fruit You can eat with a spoon when ripe. He wasn't there, although of course In life he might have been a greengrocer who liked the subtropics Who as a kid ran from Jersey to Fort Lauderdale Lived in a tent pitched In an otherwise furnitureless apartment With a half dozen others. His "job" was to pick the girls up At the strip joint Walk them home Across the dangerous parking lot. Then he ran further, to Key West Lived on the beach with sleeping bag and lobster fork, There, at the absolute Boundary between pastel and continent Lived like a pelican On cast off sport fish, Turned seventeen, Wondered what would happen next. The water hyacinth Also is not native here Though beautiful, will strangle, Clog the propeller, delay the boat's Departure through alleyed estuary. There's little difference here From fresh to salt, Sky or earth, a brackish Puddle that gives birth. Like a lotus from muddy water-- Roots in slime, Pure white blossom, In the sullied stream, white egret On legs' delicate stalk This image of perfection, This image of regret.

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Issue #26, April, 2002 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.