Bob Haynes
When Florida Fights with an Acronym
If part of the acronym
means a drag queen in stilettos the size of hams,
there are also the songs
singing to 4th graders and her voice
perfect pitch, prophet-like, cleaving
through the silence of a town
fumbling with the idea of Divine.
In the state of castles and the most famous
fairy, the acronym cleaves
a pink mess, a rainbow
that a governor can’t understand—perhaps
a punchline for a joke,
a socket where an eyeball
should have been.
If part of the acronym
bedazzles her bruises,
turns the eye, the broken jaw
into an aria, a hymn sung by a high priestess
who knows sequins and wigs
are not a mask, but armor, then
the silver ribbons she weaves
into her hair is all it takes
to morph the curses into something
that sings
and sings
and sings…
Bob Haynes lives in Seneca Falls, New York. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, Bellingham Review, Lake Effect, Poet Lore, Cimarron Review, Natural Bridge, Louisville Review, and featured on the Verse Daily website. Poems have also been reprinted in anthologies Cabin Fever (Word Words) and Kansas City Out Loud (BkMk Press), and in the poetry textbook Important Words (Boynton/Cook Heinemann). His latest book, The Grand Unified Theory (Kansas City: Paladin Contemporaries). He currently teaches online writing and visual rhetoric and poetry workshops at Arizona State University.