Welcome to Paradise
Tired of treading
deep water,
tight-roping
your stretched thin life?
Move south,
then keep going.
Welcome to hell.
Weather report:
brutally sunny
today
and every day.
There are so many ways
to get lost
in this town.
Here we speak the language
of shore birds,
the word for yesterday
the same
as tomorrow.
Enter the brightness:
it is not
as you expected.
Now your new life
begins.
Listen to the
scrtich scratch scritch
of the fresh dirt
on the closed lid
of your casket.
Note that you shine
in the moonlight
less and less
than you will ever
be
again.
No worries:
everyone you know
is here.
About the Author: Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Poetry has appeared in Fourth & Sycamore, Flatbush Review, Penny Ante Feud, ink sweat and tears, r.kv.r.y quarterly literary journal, New Verse News, Dissident Voice, Synchronized Chaos, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Rye Whiskey Review, and elsewhere. Chapbooks include Final Arrangements (Prolific Press, 2019) and the disappearing self (Kelsay Books, 2020). Newest novels: Project XX, satire about a school shooting (Salt Publishing UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love, a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books UK, 2019).
Image Credit: George Barker “Live Oaks and Palmetto, Everglades, Florida” (1886) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
As It Ought To Be 