Gulf Coast Gothic: Poem of the Month

    For more poems from The Torrid Zone,
    please visit the Summer 2008 issue of
    Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose

    Some other steamy poems by Kate
    (two G rated, one PG, one X):

    Florida Love Bugs

    Cri d’été

    Resolution

    Florida Palm Trees

Poem of the Month
Kate Bernadette Benedict

Gulf Coast Gothic

The northern winter got to them, got into every pore and bone.
They traveled to Florida to get it out of them
and it was warm there all right,
the sun rose and set as in the brochures,
the waters of the gulf were tepid and placid and green.
Still they were restless.
He lost his wallet in a coffee shop and set to brooding.
She got seasick on a tour boat.
Soon they didn’t care to leave the hotel.
Silent, on their terrace, they scanned the gulf with binoculars.
Brown pelicans roosted on brown pilings,
a brown cloud extended a brown threat.
A rum and Coke and a rum and Coke
didn’t brighten their mood any.

At last they decided to go somewhere, somewhere marshy
where cicadas would chirrup in dense grasses
and large pink birds would each stand tall on one long gracile leg.
And maybe there’d be wooden walkways
meandering in enigmatic mangroves.
So they took off in their rented coupe to a place
listed in a guidebook: Amazing Edenglades Evergardens.
He drove; she read a roadmap and watched for signs.
It took longer than they’d augured, but they found the place.

They paid a fee and walked into a maze of pavement—
blinding pavement, shimmying with heat.
There wasn’t a flower or a frond in sight, not one fresh thing.
All around were concrete pools the size of wading pools.
Some were painted venous blue, others an arterial garnet.
Lolling in each pool, filling it entirely, was what you might imagine,
a being with slime for skin and a torpid, hooded eye.
The human couple held hands and stood there,
unable to move forward, unable to retreat.
An atavistic steam closed in on them, a smell like no other,
and somewhere near, a different creature, attenuated, quick,
rattled its enormous cage and shrieked.

Originally published in Rhino and in Here from Away, 2003