Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share and examine their work, produced and moderated by John Gillespie. Episode 15 features Scott Cunningham reading “Hear The Offspring and 311 Cover Each Other’s Hits,” and Sarah Trudgeon reading “Miami Vacation!” “HEAR THE OFFSPRING AND 311 COVER EACH OTHER’S HITS” By Scott Cunningham -SPIN magazine tweet, July 19, 2018 I can’t help it. I’m always already driving down Military Trail, listening to the Offspring or 311, the CD pulled into its slot like a sunset or it’s 90 degrees in December and I’m wearing Doc Martins and a flannel, the one speckled yellow and purple, the sight of me leaving: an ornate sunset. That sound you hear is either a mosquito or a bulldozer tearing down Bo’s U-Pick the Boca Mall, La Vieille Maison—that’s French for, You missed the sunset. My palm was created to hold a bottle of Zima, the cord of a landline, the wheel of a two-door Honda. Dear October in Mizner Plaza, I miss your sunsets. I don’t know who tells the tide to obey the sea wall’s edge, what keeps the row of sea grapes from being crushed by the weight of the sunset. No one wants the last house on the street, the one pushed up against the highway’s retaining wall, a florescent bulb instead of a sunset. Our house spackles its wounds with water from the canal out back. From my perch on the roof, I watch a sugar fire cook up a brackish sunset. The mangroves walk north together, their smell overpowering the smoke. Her mouth hits mine, and what is that taste, if not the sunset? Our diving board is the train bridge that crosses over the Hillsboro canal. We wait for the horn, the light through the pines, then outrace the sunset. In Florida, breathing means swallowing, as if the sky were being poured. The flood they talk about already happened. Drowning predates the sunset. Pushed aside like fallen snow, water in the peninsula piles up in pools in ponds, in coolers. It says, Wait. I’m not done yet. To love this state, you have to divest yourself from tomorrow. Bail out your hope. Slow your heart rate to the sunset’s. They’ll build strip malls here until the town loses its name then landless, they’ll incorporate the sunset. I’ll leave enough sweat behind that the fish will call me, Father. My billboard says, Every burial in Florida—an inverted sunset. I don’t need to hear the Offspring and 311 cover each other’s hits. I witnessed the dawn. I don’t want to see the sunset. Miami Vacation! By Sarah Trudgeon I am on the balcony of 275 looking at a flamboyant tree and shadowy early people moving through the halls and windows and the fountain is going below and its fat koi. Every night I dream of our old apartment. Last week I dreamed I saw an owl in a tree in a window and made everybody look, and we got closer and the tree was actually inside, and the owl was actually a baby and I plucked him down. My mom’s beach shorts hanging on a fake Ficus flutter in the breeze. An iguana crashes around in the palm fronds. A house gecko stuck on the wall like a spy starts and stops. 80% of animals are nematodes. Aaron took the baby for a walk. Everyone else is asleep. Yesterday Saul stepped on a bee. Yesterday I smashed my finger in the door jamb now it’s purple and blue and going to fall off. I bought a new water bottle. Sid locked himself in the pool bathroom but Aaron heard him yelling. My mom said the seawater cleaned her rings and I rolled my eyes but now I see my rings are also clean. “Listen to this,” she says and I know it is going to be some tragedy about a neighbor— Died of a Tylenol overdose. Has four months to live. Became an alcoholic after the hurricane. Her husband’s father cut him out of his will. “He’s such a sweet man,” says Aaron. A sweet man. I love that Aaron said that. And the way he said it. An Australian woman and her New Jersey husband call and try to order Cuban sandwiches on the beach but the place only has croissants. They pass a pink vape pen back and forth and mutter about their daughter taking selfies on the sandbar. My toes are a little sunburned. The baby and I go to the Winn Dixie and get everything. Are these other parents better than me? Do I leave my towel here to save this chair? I thought a guy on the beach was muscly but he’s not. I think of so many Fun Things to do with the kids. The vultures soar. I drink my coffee fast. Old Ironsides is a ship made of live oak that couldn’t be blasted by cannons in the war of 1812. Everyone is coughing. We get pizza and the baby chews on a crust. Earlier I said, “Let’s get pizza, the baby can chew on a crust.” A palm warbler and an iguana hang out in the Bermuda grass. Sid keeps making fortune tellers but he has a unique understanding of fortune— You win. You lose. 40 unicorns. NBA. The laundry in the dryer was still wet this morning. I run on the beach where I used to run and dream of a husband and a baby. Somebody finds me. The baby plays with the kitchen utensils. I buy a $48 bottle of wine that I don’t drink. Aaron saves our spot on the beach. The bakery is too busy to even get into. The Seychelles tortoise can live to be 250 years old. The two at the zoo are only 100. The oldest human is 118. Hey, look at the water! Look at the sunrise! I nurse the baby in my wet bathing suit. Last night I dreamed that I drove myself off the map. My mind drifts towards to-do lists, sad little gray clouds. On the plane there is a sea of glowing white cloud cover, meaning the world below is gray. Mosquito bites. Black and blue finger. The kids are awake. But I thought I’d lost the cap to my new water bottle, but minutes before we left, the baby found it.
P. SCOTT CUNNINGHAM is the author of Self-Portrait as the “I” in Florida, winner of the 2025 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by Major Jackson and forthcoming in 2026 from Autumn House Press. His debut collection, Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas, 2018), was selected by Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. Ya Te Veo was also a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Nation, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, POETRY, A Public Space, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Monocle, and The Guardian, among others. Born and raised in South Florida, he is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the founder of the O, Miami Poetry Festival. He lives with his family in Illinois. Learn more at pscottcunningham.com.
SARAH TRUDGEON is the author of Dreams of Unhappiness and The Plot Against the Baby. Her poems and other writing have appeared in Bennington Review, Eight Miami Poets, The London Review of Books, The Nation, The Paris Review, The TLS, The Yale Review, and more. She is the literary director of The Mastheads and lives in Great Barrington, MA. Learn more at sarahtrudgeon.com.