A Response from Florida Woman.

You think:
I am the high heel 

Stumbling

I am the tight top

I am the fleshy rolls

I am the smell of melting plastic and 

Forwarded stories of eaten faces. 

Truth is:

I am the bev nap

placed neatly underneath

the mojito you ordered.  

I am the clogs

choked with sand

that hustle those dunes 

getting your perfect,

neon drink

into your dismissive paw

I am Carl. I am Jim. I am 

free-fucking-falling. 

I am not a rich kid, skipping class

beneath the comforting canopy

of waxy, white Magnolia. 

I am not bone dry under the impenetrable 

umbrella of Old Money. 

I do not miss the red line

or Middlesbrough 

or the soft hiss of snowflakes. 

I ask, as you sit here, white knuckling

Styrene pints,

if you would have attended a show

with a topic like 

“Michigan Man”

and sat around

drooling out stories about outsourced

livelihoods and babies nursing 

black water bottles. 

You think I am 

classless

without talent. 

High on oxy contin. 

But I am steadfast, thick skinned as a

Spanish fort. 

I am staked by a mangrove spine. 

I nod. I laugh. 

You mistake the space I give. 

I am a shark turning a tightening circle

around your foreign, tourist hands

that snap pieces off of my

reefs to decorate your ten gallon

in New Jersey. 

I am the 35% 

of Florida residents

that were born here. 

The others? The rest?

We cannibalized.