Deeper South

I've lived in Tampa now for almost four years, and I've found acceptance here. It took plenty of salt water to wash all the layers of big northern cities from my skin, but I feel like I fit in now. Some of that has to do as much with the place as with me - Florida has been host to transplants for centuries - the Spanish, the English, Americans and more recently "northerners." In my travels though, I've found that some southern cities and towns are less accepting of this, and though they invite you in with a warm smile and a beer-battered meal, they subtly and politely remind you that their south and yours are not the same thing.

Deeper South

You can gawk and point fingers
At the monuments to those
Of cursed memory.
Snap pictures on the sly
Of the bones of the saints
And the Fiji Mermaids
That we keep shackled
In the vaults of our cathedrals.
Fumble your blunt tongue
Over the broken sidewalks
Of our quaint street names and sayings.

But it isn’t your blood
That once cut rivers through the
Fields coarse hands work.
Those names carved in the stones
Set atop that hill, they
Aren’t any relations of yours.

To you it’s a second language;
Rebranding our memories
With your Instagram photos.

You’re fashioned from data analytics,
Not shale or corn cob, or red clay
Bound in plastic, not kudzu, and
The deep delta mud under your fingernails
Wasn’t born there.

As a child, you never learned the rhymes
That teach you which path will grant you
Safe passage past the witch’s cave.

So occupy the outer rings of our circles
Sample our music and shine
Purchase a plot of land,

But know you well,
Not one or all
Of those things
Will ever make you

From here.