KJ Hannah Greenberg’s most recent poem to appear here was “Her Epidemic of Bicycles” (May 2020).

Dry Tortugas National Park
By KJ Hannah Greenberg

“Jut ‘cause,” creates stupid, unsafe, ugly buildings.
Mainstream, bizarro, or other types of storytelling
Makes improved, external dwellings, mainly bars.

Persons recognized under custom, or edict of state,
Create havens for unreliable documents, as well as
Circumscribe various slipstream nocturnal activities.

Eventually, scribes’ reputations serve as intimidators,
(Not facilitators.) Contrariwise, some glass, ceramics,
Also metal, gets dunked among carnivorous biturongs.

Then civets, linsangs, and genets born to the manor,
Employ cathemeral means to spark vocational efforts
(Think of climbing limb over limb through canopies.)

Dry Tortugas National Park, that island by Key West,
Parallel to other American points of reference, drives
Consolation contemporaneous with deeds of violence.