Peter M. Gordon

FLORIDA MAN

When breathing air feels like drinking swamp water
and sweat falls unevaporated to sizzle on sidewalks

Florida Man emerges, to start a fight in a pizza joint
when wrong cheese is applied to his garlic knots.

Florida Man provides pot and ecstasy to reward his
children for good grades. Florida Man writes his cell

phone number and address on the stickup note to
make it easy for the teller to send more money after

the robbery. Only Florida Man snorts bath salts and meth,
walks next door to bludgeon his neighbors and eat their flesh

raw, in their driveway, where everyone can see him.
Perhaps it’s this thumb-shaped peninsula’s fault, the

right-angled thrust into the Atlantic that causes lightning
to clash over its center, illuminating all our dark places,

that makes us all a little bit Florida Man, waiting for the
weight of sin to sink our sandbar into primordial swamp.


Peter reads "Florida Man":



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Peter confesses: "Even though I've lived in Orlando for almost a quarter-century I am still amazed at what some of our citizens do. This poem arose from my reading Florida crime news and from my worry that there may be something in the air that gradually infects everyone that lives here."

PETER M. GORDON has published over 100 poems in publications such as Slipstream, the Journal of Florida Literature, Poetry Breakfast, and others. He is the author of two collections: Two Car Garage and Let's Play Two: Poems about Baseball. Peter earned a BA from Yale and MFA from Carnegie-Mellon, and teaches in Full Sail University's Film Production MFA program.