Alligator Alley & Tuesday at the Reservoir//Kate Kobosko

Alligator Alley

The name a fun house
of scrub and brush
and chain link to keep
the primordial out.
Like a belt, highway
cinches the land:

forgotten Florida,
crushed between
the pastel west coast
and Art-Deco Miami
with its monorail
skylines, mojito bars,
premeditated green spaces.

The Everglades,
verdant green in its
topography, is quiet
land, unconverted.
Scaled dinosaurs
do not blink in the sun,
just lump like fallen
trees in motionless
culverts. I drove it dark,

saw creation peel
itself back to the start. 
When I stopped for gas
the clerk regarded me
with reptilian indifference
and as the car filled,
the swamp of night
watched me, unblinking.

Tuesday at the Reservoir

The Denali’s hail-dented hood is blacktop
hot in the sun, but we spread our towels
and melt into it, heat bruising our pale

skin. It is late May, we are seventeen.
Neon bikinis are in. She has tied her hot
pink phosphorescent triangles so tight

the string makes an equally pink mark
on her collarbone. We are reflections of it all:
the sun bouncing between us like a backlit

air hockey puck in an arcade. We trade
gulps of cherry lime wine cooler, lick
the acid pucker of corn syrup from the ridge

of our shared cup. Today it’s enough to feel
the car key’s hot fob in my palm, to have parked
the truck on a slant, in a nowhere gravel lot
with a girl my mother doesn’t know.

Kate Kobosko is a poet and an elementary school teacher. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College and has an undergraduate degree from Eckerd College. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Autofocus, Humana Obscura, Saltbush Review, Kelp Journal, and others. Her poem “Not Her Ocean” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. She currently lives in South Carolina.