Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place—and that “most of us are breathing.”
“Tallahassee Ghazal” is part of the collection Poets Resist, Refuse, and Find a Way Through. Read the introduction to the collection here.
Tallahassee Ghazal – Listen
Enter sunset. Two boys listen by the tracks to a slow train leaving town.
The train breathes hard. Its thunder ends. The boys: “Gotta get out of this town.”
June, and the college kids pack their bags. They hate this South—they almost wish it
would burn behind them on the highway out of town.
Look up from the swamps, the train tracks, the sunken, soggy trails: how
to miss the governor’s tower, oblong and concrete, the tallest eyesore in town?
June, and the only gay bar around has half-off vodka, soda drowned
in blackouts. Hands find warm company in thighs, in a bathroom-sized town.
The Capitol, in dawn light, is a pillar of phosphorus. With no trees around, (Tallahassee is the state capital of Florida.)
the ground is hot poison, foot-frying, weaponized. Just try to protest in this town.
June, and all the lawns are Spanish grass and crown vetch.
Lawns announce in bold red signs: They do not want you in this town.
Pit bull puppy / Have you seen him? / Call if found.
Flyers and a number roast on wire poles across town.
June, and you must not call the police. They carry dark rounds.
You’re safe inside, reading the wiki—you cannot breathe—about sundown towns.
Flyers and a number roast on wire poles across town.
Pit bull puppy / Have you seen him? / Call if found.
June, and it’s margarita season, the month for lime zest, ice blocks, and loud: every way to
kill money, kill days, lick the salt off the months in this town.
Lithe little clippers snip the heads off crown vetch.
Kudzu swallows them: a green snake stomach, circling the town.
June, and you watch the goslings by the pond, tender and brown.
Next month, the kudzu will bloom violet, a living skirt of the town.
Ask for the names to burn, for the statues to be melted down; (Since 2015, numerous initiatives in the U.S. South have removed monuments or renamed landmarks that honor Confederate figures, who supported, or were themselves perpetrators of, racial segregation, human trafficking, and enslavement. One example is Francis Eppes, a plantation owner who had enslaved people. He had been honored by a statue and building in his name on the campus of Florida State University until 2020. )
the cliches keep breathing when you’re tired of trying to change your town.
June, and most of us are breathing. This is enough to be proud. Historian, you are lucky
to survive your hometown.
The post Tallahassee Ghazal appeared first on SAPIENS.
