Erica Kenick
\n
\nYour Okeechobee eye didn\u2019t see us coming,
\nWalkman and pet parrot in my lap,
\nbut I spied you from the boxed-in backseat
\non the East Coast map, a swampy turtle head
\nso close to becoming your own island, our new home.
\n
\nFrom car to house and back again I trudged
\nheavy-footed behind my parents.
\nWe filled the stucco-roofed house
\nwith our Northern belongings that also
\nseemed uncomfortable with this weird air.
\n
\nThe front yard appeared prepared
\nfor catastrophe: thick-rooted palms
\nwith their sandpaper trunks,
\nthe leathery leaves of shrubs
\nlike stegosaurus scales \u2013
\neven the flowering plant only feigned delicacy,
\nits tender pink blossoms concealing thorns
\nand a toxic sap as white and fluid as milk.
\n
\nFlorida, your land is an armor of prehistoric secrets,
\nresistant to squall and neat county lines.
\n
\nOur quick settling-in created friction
\nin the atmosphere. We never knew
\nlightning until it fizzled our AC unit
\nand sent us packing to another hotel
\nour first night in town.
\n
\nEverything here is heavy and volatile;
\nthe air itself conspires to re-gift
\nmoist heat to hurricanes.
\nMy father and I would pen their arcs
\non a gridded chart, exciting galaxies
\nthat meant no school, a dark house, and living
\nconfined with the potted patio plants.
\n
\nIn adolescence, Florida, you killed my sex appeal,
\nfrizzing my hair and melting my make-up.
\nYour shores and community pools
\nforced my baby fat on premature display.
\nI would daydream about standing beneath
\nsome outrageously purple bougainvillea
\nwhere a faceless boy invited me
\nto lie down right there and take things
\nfurther. But that\u2019s as far as things went
\nbecause the grass was all wrong.
\nStabbing, inflexible, undying,
\nSt. Augustine grass, like its reformed namesake,
\ndid not condone promiscuity.
\n
\nFreshly adult and at ease, sipping caf\u00e9 con leche,
\nI eye your shore and see it as the friendly skin
\nof this country\u2019s warm sandy hand,
\never extended; a golden landing strip,
\nglittering marker of freedom for so many.
\n
\nFlorida, you are some fertile earth mother
\nAmerica does not deserve.
\nEven in suburbia where we forced
\nyour marshland dry with melaleucas, even
\nin the thicket of Miami steel and causeways,
\nsomething blooms. If the lawnmowers,
\nthe highway hum, the construction work
\nthat never stops or barely begins
\nwould rest, I would rest, too,
\nwith the sounds of water and something
\nmoving, always moving, in the Thatch Palms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erica Kenick Your Okeechobee eye didn\u2019t see us coming, Walkman and pet parrot in my lap, but I spied you from the boxed-in backseat on the East Coast map, a swampy turtle head so close to becoming your own island, our new home. From car to house and back again I trudged heavy-footed behind my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}