TWO POEMS by SOPHIA UPSHAW
JUST ONE MORE AND I SWEAR I’LL STOP
Did you hear? Snowbirds are back
and this time they’re staying.
These days, it seems even the crows
pilot Winnipeg plates. It’s freezing
in Tallahassee, what with those damn
pipes bursting in the Arctic.
Termites in the White House,
lead in the water supply,
another shooting I’m ashamed to admit
I’ll forget with the next—
Can things still “go to hell” if we’re already there?
Just this morning, I spent 7 bucks
on a loaf of bread, slices the size
of an infant’s fist, all in time
to do the dishes, use them,
and wash them again. It’s like you said,
I’m Sisyphus with tits, Icarus in a hot
little number, destined to fall, but where?
This world is becoming increasingly
populated with strangers,
and it hurts to walk across a damn room,
but you made it look easy—
Here I am still straddling the railing,
looking for you after every comma,
praying it’s not your face I’ll see
on the 5 o’clock news, not your name
on a death toll, not your car overturned
in a canal off SR-40,
and hating the small part of myself
that hopes it might be,
if only to prove there’s something left of you
to lose. But this earth has been salted,
this lake, drained. There’s nothing I can do
except nothing at all—this, I know.
Every night, I turn your memory loose,
and every morning, you show up
like a flea-ridden stray at my door—
but who am I kidding?
My porch light eyes burn so bright
even the mosquitos come calling.
MIDNIGHT AT MILE 0, KEY WEST
Good news! I spoke with Truman’s butterflies,
cornered a drunk orb stumbling down Duval,
and cupped my ear to a conch-shaped grave:
they said we could stay here forever.
Wherever you go, there you are, and where we are
is here, Southernmost Point of the Continental
United States. Everything funnels into this:
our good, our grief, our good grief, and the fat lot
of good it ever did us. Just picture it: all our haves
and have-nots shucked and served over a bed
of ice with 3 heaps of horseradish, a slice
of Kermit’s Key lime pie to chase it all down.
A perfect world isn’t that much of a stretch
if we’re a couple of six-toed calicoes sunbathing
on the salted rim of Hemingway’s bath,
57 coconuts falling from the sky with the flick
of a tail, splitting open to reveal ready-made
piña coladas, everything poolside.
That or we could team up with the roosters,
jaywalking across Eaton, golf cart tires screeching
at the sight of our scrawny ankles, so brazen
and untouchable, and we’d know it too.
We could cross the world just for the fun of it.
We could flap our tawny wings and wind up
nowhere at all—which is halfway to Sloppy Joe’s
if you think about it, and I always am.
When your back was turned, I looked beyond
the sea wall. I saw what lays ahead: laundry, taxes,
laundry again, a 9-5 existence, taxed
and dog-tagged, haggling over APR rates
and avocados we can’t afford. But behind us
is a lighthouse that works most of the time,
pillow chocolates, and a stiff pour to cap
the night. The edge of this world is but a hop,
skip, stumble, and golf cart ride away.
It’s a miracle we don’t fall off.
Sophia Upshaw (she/her) is a Tallahassee-based poet with an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her work is featured or forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Al Dente, oddball magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Mistake House, and elsewhere. In addition to teaching first-year composition at Florida State, Sophia also serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for the Southeast Review. You can find her on Substack.