Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Jeff Newberry
Panhandle Elegies

Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the
things which shall be hereafter.
--Revelation 1:19


Poem for Apalachicola, Florida

Floodplain forests spill
Into the bay, a brackish  

Mix of swamp & salt.
Channel cat slice saw grass

& sea birds cluster on a concrete
Causeway, scatter as cars & trucks  

Roar by, tires thump-thumping,
Thump-thumping, the galloped

Rhythm a murmured heart.
Pattoon Bridge spans Apalachicola  

Bay, stretches to St. George Island,
The rich man's backyard playhouse,  

Where frat boys & suits knock
Back imports with South Florida

Sweethearts, Atlanta transplants
With fake bakes, & Tallahassee  

Debutantes, orange kings, tomato queens.
A few fishermen tightline beneath 319,

Haul out black drum, sheephead,
The occasional speckled trout.

Old men in white hip waders gig
Flounder in skiffs, dark figures

On a gray sea, chiaroscuro
Against evening fog.  Ground oyster

Shells form every bank & church
Parking lot, crushed calcium that leads  

Down to the edge of the bay itself,
Down to the salt.  A pearl must lie  

In the soft muscle of one fleshy heart,
Though the oystermen never tell such tales.



Poem for Panama City, Florida

Sailboats carve white wakes in St. Andrew's Bay
& tugboats push barges beneath Hathaway Bridge—

All silhouetted against a gasoline haze in a nickel
Gray morning.  A condominium's rebar skeleton

Rises like a ruin near a dry-rotted billboard:
"World's Most Beautiful Beaches."  Time shares

& topless bars crowd by palm scrubs & pine saplings.
A 10-foot chain fence surrounds the abandoned  

Miracle Strip, now a sea of grass-cracked asphalt.
Downtown, a few old men fish the marina,

Cast into the wind.  Rust-pocked pickup trucks
Pack the paper mill parking lot & community  

College students wait tables in sea green bistros.
All day, workers on 98 smear tar on broken  

Blacktop behind a steaming truck, hold "Stop"
Signs, "Slow" signs.   On the edge of town,  

West of Tyndall Air Force Base, aluminum-sided
Houses darken in the paper mill's shadow.  Above,

F-16s Immelman behind drones in a creosote sky.



Poem for Wewahitchka, Florida

Who finds this place finds a lake of jagged
Bone, gray tree trunks rising from still water,

The left-over runoff of the sand-blocked
Chipola, dammed from the Apalachicola.   

Sons & daughters leave, rarely return.
Old timers pull channel cat from the lake,

Clean & freeze them for the winter
When the wind's too cold to fish.  

Tourists happen down 77, the only stop
maybe gas, a red light, a mom & pop  

Fish fry serving up bream, catfish, rolled red
Roe, cheese grits, fried potatoes, sweet tea.

In summer, asphalt strips rubber from tires
That pass here, black streaks burnt to streets

That lead back to the only road out of town.
Coast dwellers down by the bay come north

In these hurricane months, take shelter
In Baptist churches, pray for the cyclone

To pass, to deluge another town, to leave
A gaped maw along the coast elsewhere,

East or west, Jacksonville, Pensacola, maybe
Out of state, someone else's tragedy, while  

Here, Dead Lakes' waters rise, flood the bank,
Stand dank, still. Weeks may pass before water recedes.
Jeff Newberry is currently a student at the University of Georgia in
Athens, pursuing a doctorate in the Creative Writing Program.  His
poems and essays have appeared recently in Copper Nickel, The
Eleventh Muse , and Poetry Southeast.