m₁₂

// the realization I could have died just now

Midway, Florida

a census designated place

28º North

81º West

1.4 miles, all land

m₁₃

// that Florida

is my quarter-time home

is water

is the patio swing where I nap

& the sun on bronze elephants

it is gambling for stamps

the dimes in my pockets

for fountains & scratch-offs

it is pretending to be a physicist

& crickets

& weekends alone with Grey Goose

that Florida is my grandfather’s sleeves

sweat-damp in summer gardens

but this Florida

is also a home

I must love

because I keep coming back

because I am still driving

because I trace my descent

along its American underspire

m₁₄

// lives up to my nightmares

here is the palmetto bug

here is the hurricane

here is the proposal

              & the year without sex

here is the death of my ambition

here are the sheets that never warm

the floors that don’t sweep themselves

               & the bosses who will lay me off

here is the Florida of my dreams

the collapse of the white dwarf

reaching Chandrasekhar limit

               & falling to degeneracy

m₁₅

// & I am

an n-body problem

because I interact, am given

Eddington luminosity

by these equations——

one over frequency,

current times distance,

now horsepower

in relation to torque

& I am in this seat

doing the yeoman’s work

of relocating, of settling

for Florida’s budburst protocol

when I’d rather be on my back

in Arkansas or Illinois, Alabama

or the Carolinas——doing work

I chose, not just inherited.

m₁₆

// allergic to bee stings

anaphylactic, where my eyelids

bulge to fat mouths against protection

yet prophylactic is both before protection

& in front of what is cherished——

etymology is cruel to a girl

etymology will be the death of us

etymology, trying to escape the sting

etymology of bees, of being