The streets of Memphis’ town had been orange groves when he was a boy. He remembered as, one by one, the groves were bulldozed to make room for neighborhoods, for the people from up north, finally tired of the long winters, to settle into their respiratory diseases and neurological disorders.
These days we still don’t stop for death.
Instead, we pass by and outside the window
lining the suburban boulevard one tree gleams
in the morning sun—the trunk wound tight in tinsel...
Bag of sugar sized muscle pumps blood. Most reptiles:
3-chambered heart but gator 4-chambers like mammals
& birds which gators used to be millions of years ago
when they were dinosaurs...
He only came back because Melvin said he would kill him if he didn’t pay off his debt by the end of the week. It was why he left St. Augustine, why he had no choice but to drive down to Lehigh Acres and dig up the box of money he’d buried in his brother’s yard fourteen years before.
The sharp oyster beds cut into the feet and to move in the water is a slowness. There is a quiet around you there. The sun is almost welcome. Is almost a wanted sun up above the window of the sea you wade through the bending sights below all bended and rippled you pass a hand through that waterpane and see your arm take an angle to the oyster there...
