It was the summer I worked on Siesta Key
slinging cold Bud cans and making change

out a fanny pack, dragging beach chairs
across the sand in my bikini, boring holes

for umbrellas with a drill bit over a foot long,
getting tipped in singles, old snowbirds

smacking my ass behind their grandchildren’s backs.
I was the only one not scamming the place,

fudging how many ice cream cones I sold
or pushing pills to the lifeguards.

After work I’d drive to her house, windows down
because the AC made my car struggle.

I was trying to keep her honest, maybe
if she sold all the drugs, she couldn’t do them.

In a beach town like ours, it was easy
to find the goods, even easier to find the market.

I drove her all night, picking up and
dropping off whatever was on special;

not the first time she hustled
to pay for food and cigarettes,

not the first time I was an accomplice,
saying I was just along for the ride.

I didn’t so much mind the QVC addict’s maze of
As-Seen-On-TV products piled to the ceilings

or the storage units of runaway gutter kids
bare knuckle boxing around trash fires,

or the trailers that smelled of burned carpet
or the fat restaurant owner’s catering van.

Not the crack houses, or the trap houses,
or the house boats floating in Marina Jacks.

Not the swamp ranches with cameras in the eaves
and ARs at the ready just inside the door.

Those were our people, or at least
they were from the same shit we came from.

It was the waterfront mansions made of glass
I hated, bored teenagers overdosing in hot tubs;

wealthy bachelors fucking too-young
girls in the backs of Mercedes,

guard dogs fed on choice cut meat,
purebred growls bellowed in low-lit rooms.

They were always her favorite stops because
she’d get tipped with a broken pill

or a line to blow with their rolled-up hundred.
She couldn’t see the way they looked at us

like it was charity, like getting her high
was the least they could do, considering

our shitty lives and the shitty cars we drove.
They looked at us as if we were beggars,

bottom feeders, but we were all
creatures of the deep, dark,

sifting through bits of wreckage, animals
burying ourselves and calling it survival.