{"id":6941,"date":"2022-06-08T17:47:27","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T17:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=6941"},"modified":"2022-06-08T17:47:27","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T17:47:27","slug":"holiday-2","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winner of the 2021 Humboldt Poetry Prize; originally published in TFR 44.2 <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On this day that in my childhood we celebrated Christmas<\/p>\n

I found myself this year on the Gulf of Mexico<\/p>\n

with the sea gone as leaden as clay. It seemed to heave<\/p>\n

with an inner dislike\u2014at least from where I stood, three stories up<\/p>\n

from the beach, a few expensive yards in<\/p>\n

from the sand, the humid spray blocked<\/p>\n

by the floor-to-ceiling windows,<\/p>\n

and the barely moving palms. I was making<\/p>\n

a dinner from my childhood. An egg batter you poured<\/p>\n

in hot oil and closed inside the oven for a full<\/p>\n

twenty minutes till inflated to crisp gold,<\/p>\n

plus a wad of beef crosshatched and pressed with flour and salt.<\/p>\n

As it cooked, I read my son the story of Midas, how<\/p>\n

he wanted the idea of everything, and the lesson was<\/p>\n

that everything was dangerous. Darwin wrote that late<\/p>\n

in life he\u2019d lost his taste for poetry, for the fat copy of Milton<\/p>\n

he was said to take with him on that first trip, still particular<\/p>\n

for all the living parts of earth and mind. The couch<\/p>\n

I sat on thinking this was as long as the yachts<\/p>\n

we\u2019d seen that day at the marina. In their moorings<\/p>\n

they were lined so tight and tidily they hardly bobbed, each the same<\/p>\n

synthetic just-washed white and dark blue lettering.<\/p>\n

We looked at all their given names. We saw some people walk their dog,<\/p>\n

step off their bleached wood deck, onto the plastic dock,<\/p>\n

as their small thing scampered merrily into the nearby grass,<\/p>\n

the people calling after, calling after. Our boys ran ahead.<\/p>\n

What is it to live at this cushioned here and now, these privileged<\/p>\n

boundaries where everything that could be said, remembered,<\/p>\n

can yet still lie ill or unexpressed: the page I read about the girls<\/p>\n

who shaved their teacher\u2019s head and stabbed at it with scissors,<\/p>\n

the ink they poured upon it, I was scared to tell my husband<\/p>\n

how it haunted me, it followed me all day, such cruelty,<\/p>\n

and then the nothingness of ocean and the light\u2019s jewels rippling on it,<\/p>\n

at least on these high days when the sun shines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winner of the 2021 Humboldt Poetry Prize; originally published in TFR 44.2   On this day that in my childhood we celebrated Christmas I found myself this year on the Gulf of Mexico with the sea gone as leaden as clay. It seemed to heave with an inner dislike\u2014at least from where I stood, three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6941","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHoliday 2 - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Holiday 2 - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Winner of the 2021 Humboldt Poetry Prize; originally published in TFR 44.2   On this day that in my childhood we celebrated Christmas I found myself this year on the Gulf of Mexico with the sea gone as leaden as clay. 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It seemed to heave with an inner dislike\u2014at least from where I stood, three […]","og_url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/","og_site_name":"The Florida Review","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/","name":"Holiday 2 - The Florida Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/#website"},"datePublished":"2022-06-08T17:47:27+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/holiday-2\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Holiday 2"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/","name":"The Florida Review","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/6941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/6941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}