October 2020
Bio Note: I'm a retired English Professor spending my time writing, taking the occasional photograph,
trying to follow the Dharma. My full-length poetry volume Time is Not a River (available on Amazon) was
published by Transcendent Zero Press in March 2020.
Come On Down!
Sixty years back swamps in Florida were road free and con men sold land in the Everglades or lots on the beach. Come on down, the TV commercials blared, until my father and his friends took 2nd mortgages and signed for pieces of Paradise— palm trees and warm sunsets. When they came back from Miami, grim-faced and sunburned, no one talked about the barren water-soaked land, snakes, mosquitoes, gators, or the abandoned mobile home at the end of a dusty road. The laughter still ringing in their ears and back home wives too angry for tears, wiping down the kitchen tables their lips pressed in a straight line flat as the horizon along the River of Grass.
Originally published in Rabid Oak (2018) and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
©2020 Michael Minassian
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