By Patrick Doyle
Here we are again, back at la escuela. This is hopefully my last semester but who knows. How was your summer? Mine was good. I got to bop around Florida for a while and experience that whole thing. Florida is very different from my last destinations (Alaska…Northern California…), but definitely has its own “feel” or something. I wonder if everyone there is miserable.

This poem was written about the day I visited Miami for about four hours. It was not what I expected Miami to be like, but then again my only thing to go off of is Miami Vice, or that Welcome to Miami song.

Miami, or how the Supernatural became Au-Naturale

when we arrived in Miami,
we decided to visit a record store
that was in the Arts District.

my Northeast sensibilities moved like
plates in the Earth trying to form a
new Nation in my mind
but instead was transported to the
Little Haiti of Miami, where witchcraft
and Voodoo presented themselves as
if they were on large billboards with
ceremony candles to make them plain
to me.

I lost a pack of Marlboros and about a mile
down the road a guy asked me for a cigarette
and I said, “sure.”

They were not on my persons so I looked at him
like, “Oh, I lost them.”

“Marlboros. Reds. They are back there,” he said,
pointing in the direction I came from.

I ran back really fast and left my lover there
with him. He asked if we were train punks
and he said we looked madly in love.

They were still there.
I snatched them up and ran back.
He was right.
How did he know?
Miami was a weird occult nightmare,
like if Voodoo Societies decided to start
selling products to tourists in the
“nice part” of Miami.

That same day I also called out an Italian
pervert who was taking pictures of grrl’s
behinds. He was crummy at trying to lie
and told me I was crazy.