FLORIDA, BY KASEY JUEDS |
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The first time I tried the pocket knife you gave me, it slipped and sliced my palm. We were driving south, toward the place where I was born. I thrust the cloth I’d used to staunch the blood to the bottom of my bag, folded the blade so just the dull edge showed. Smoothed an unhurt finger over the handle: carved from an old boat’s hull and inscribed on both sides, the wood riven with narrow channels where words were chiseled in. On my palm, that bright seam lingered for months. Afterwards an old sadness took its place, skin making invisible what has touched it. I lived here when _______. And when I try to picture that boat, I can’t. Only planks fitted together to keep the ocean out, metallic light on the leaves of strange trees hemming the trail to the mangrove swamp. I don’t know their names or if, after we left, they bloomed. Only that while we were gone, a snake shuddered out of its translucent skin and left it outside our door. |
Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Thicket, forthcoming in 2021. Her work can be found in journals including American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Pleiades. She lives in the mountains of New York State with one human, a spotted dog, and many houseplants.