“Ft. Misery,” Fla., a poem from Marion Dreyfus
retail RVs for the leftover retirees
who couldn't climb up to Sanibel Island or Naples
they sun and sweat in the traffic of tourists
both the harijans outside the
gated communities,
sharing with the time-share condo'ers
(yuppies still reaping the yippee!s
of the dot-com mad 90s)
a hop-skip-and- a-jimmie
from the Okeechobee holler and the
south-central swamps;
picture the car paths
that mishmash of minivans and RVs
SUVs and 'wagons, puff-up rafts abrim with
spanky coolers of Kool-Aid and Coors
weary, cranky moms'n'pops, forgetful,
unstrung and weavy between two lanes
their gas caps gosh, a-slosh,
white-and-tan vans
steered by big-haired blue-heads
and teeth-in-a-tumbler octagenamen
pale vestige owlick of the tippy-top sports
dreary steering whee!s
doing the white-knuckle 28 in a 55. . .
or leatherette-tan taut talkers
on their Nokias to their brokas,
swerving 'round the whooshing swooshing
monster semis with their statement roll bars
and pride-of-polish gunracks
workin' off their shifts before they hit
their Gr-8 Bowl-Mor Lounge,
the rough salad of funsters outta the
mud flats doing 89 in a 55
hurling toxic hellmouth out their
roll-downs to the tepid
tourgroups in timid seatbelt aghast,
escapism not the half of it cum
Ft. Miz'ry (nee Myers)