run through the west village in flames (mishearing)

Insect Life of Florida
by Lynda Hull

In those days I thought their endless thrum

was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.

In the throats of hibiscus and oleander

I’d see them clustered yellow, blue, their shells

enameled hard as the sky before the rain.

All that summer, my second, from city

to city my young father drove the black coupe

through humid mornings I’d wake to like fever

parceled between luggage and sample goods.

Afternoons, showers drummed the roof,

my parents silent for hours. Even then I knew

something of love was cruel, was distant.

Mother leaned over the seat to me, the orchid

Father’d pinned in her hair shriveled

to a purple fist. A necklace of shells

coiled her throat, moving a little as she

murmured of alligators that float the rivers

able to swallow a child whole, of mosquitoes

whose bite would make you sleep a thousand years.

And always the trance of blacktop shimmering

through swamps with names like incantations—

Okeefenokee, where Father held my hand

and pointed to an egret’s flight unfolding

white above swamp reeds that sang with insects

until I was lost, until I was part

of the singing, their thousand wings gauze

on my body, tattooing my skin.

Father rocked me later by the water,

the motel balcony, singing calypso

with the Jamaican radio. The lyrics

a net over the sea, its lesson

of desire and repetition. Lizards flashed

over his shoes, over the rail

where the citronella burned merging our

shadows—Father’s face floating over mine

in the black changing sound

of night, the enormous Florida night,

metallic with cicadas, musical

and dangerous as the human heart.