Empire of Light
︎︎︎ Ian Hall
︎ Sept 22, 2026
For Tobin, Garrison, & Connor
The pergola by my apartment
takes all comers. So much so
it’s grown this mustache
of vape cartridges & crack rigs
twirling rapscallion clear to the
trailhead. But all this schlock is American
made vis-à-vis 3-D printed
sunbelt polymer, so hooray
for autarky at least. Must be part
& parcel to that epic breadwinning
ethnogenesis I’ve long heard
rumored. Eureka: the civilizational up
& up is motored by smut
hut kratom pills! Some phraseology
from a recent gazebo
safari: can I have your solemn
promise that it won’t mar me to nix
the balloon & hoover this Galaxy
Gas straight from the copper
nipple? No frostbite? Incidentally
there are some wildcat
courgettes growing along this same
stretch of greenway. An orphan patch
sloven & thriving. Something out
of a comfy little Britannic village
sitcom, almost. But weedy
& stallion & senselessly theatric—toxic
somehow to the commonweal. It screams
frontiersmanship. Cracker vitalism. That CTE
stick-to-itiveness that is these Estados
Unidos incarnate. It is in toto the enigma I know
to be Florida.
The chicken & waffles at Bistro Palms
could warm the cockles of any old liver-spotted
Hyperion. C-suite beachflesh
like squeezed lemons. Tax-deductible
sunburns. Mussel skyscrapers cold & fetal beside the ice
company in Apalachicola. This might as well be my aloe
vera theodicy. The Gulf conundrum: who cares
about Medicare graft, fent mills, skinny monsoon
indemnities, dental debt, or extended
warranty SWAT teams when those brushstrokes
of pink & aquamarine start to stylize
the eventide off St. George Island? So what
if some sleaze triple-swipes you for a roof
he refashioned out of Uncrustables, Bondo, &
armpit grease? When you see the eight
pm shadowplay scintillate on those Cinnabon
soffits, you’ll smirk amnesiac. Have another
mojito in the meantime. I just put in for a round
of tapas bowfin. & dessert: the saucy white
deco of buildings blurring past as we whiz
back to the capital—to yon metropole, yon
omphalos. It’s just dusk enough for me to pull
faces in the rearview & feign cutthroat. A fibrous
swashbuckler like Sonny Crockett or Travis
McGee, with more than my share
of sulk. I can almost see Achilles Murat—monsieur
blubber—scowling down from his chateau
on Polaris, wrathful that some free lunch hillbilly is
swaggering so surehanded along his Forgotten
Coast.
They’re all waiting for me
behind The Wilbury, a flight of toilet
bowl tequila shots at standby. The whir
of signage on Gaines Street is peak
moodboard for this sensitive young
seer, or so I tell myself. & Don Henley’s yacht
sloth warble basically ratifies
my suspicions. The earworm: one of
these nights, one of these
crazy old nights; & I can only say
touché. In the alley orthogonal
to The Bark, I’m still saying touché
over two hours later to no
one discernible—weathering another
Ziploc of sniff & some Kremlin
cosmonaut shit. It’s pouring
snow in Tallahassee in the ides
of April. All I know is we
best sort the Twisted
Teas before 2am. I’d row your gondola
through a grotto of Tweas
if I could. They taste succinctly
like you turned up
a hummingbird feeder. No I don’t
mind that all that citrus ashes
through the wonton lining
of my duodenum. That’s tomorrow’s
predicament. Down here we always deal
with mañana, mañana.
Men & women in a muggy bedsit.
Men & women stacked
like cupholder change
on bean bag, boneless
futon. Ongoing: a most
spermicidal game of finger
& thigh Tetris. At daybreak
the women retire & the men palpate
their elysian snail trails for a while
more. Some favorites: the low-slung
Pennsylvanian making much of a darkling
pixie cut; the 90-pound bottle
blonde who quadruple fists
firewater; the far upcountry
poetess who smoothbored
a hole through my guise
of hayseed satyr with her hazel
beholders (& on Hallows’ Eve, no
less). To all of them silently
I inquire—care if I fall
by and glean you later? This
stones us for a moment, & stricken
we ossify in our own oily
id. But, with lunchtime testing
the fortitude of those Shenzhen blackout
blinds, it’s almost bathetic to admit
what we’ve genuinely been after: esprit
de corps—just me & the guys against
this bleh, excruciatingly bourgeois
Wednesday, passing a flask
of impromptu joy back & forth, phooey
on the Kali Yuga.
We should probably call it, but how
bout a toot for the road? Or a mushed
up Addy if we’ve really, truly
redlined. A pinch of brotherly
aftercare: make certain you take those dark
net Percocets before the garbage
truck backs up, beeping like seven
doomsaying trumpets, & dumps what’s left
of your serotonin into the Leon
County landfill.
Curbside, hem-hawing ahead of my mystery
meat Lyft, & it begins to drizzle. Begins to
comedown. I’d assuredly flunk
a piss quiz or thyroid panel
as things stand. TMJ, tremors, slingshot
cortisol & all. But, from nowhere, sweet
shimmery deus ex machina, an eggshell
Testarossa clips into frame. Looks
like you could use a lift—volunteers a tan
man in Ray-Bans & torrid flamingo
sport coat…
This is how I want you
to remember me, Florida: throttling
muscled & melancholic through your new
cities of the tropics.
The pergola by my apartment
takes all comers. So much so
it’s grown this mustache
of vape cartridges & crack rigs
twirling rapscallion clear to the
trailhead. But all this schlock is American
made vis-à-vis 3-D printed
sunbelt polymer, so hooray
for autarky at least. Must be part
& parcel to that epic breadwinning
ethnogenesis I’ve long heard
rumored. Eureka: the civilizational up
& up is motored by smut
hut kratom pills! Some phraseology
from a recent gazebo
safari: can I have your solemn
promise that it won’t mar me to nix
the balloon & hoover this Galaxy
Gas straight from the copper
nipple? No frostbite? Incidentally
there are some wildcat
courgettes growing along this same
stretch of greenway. An orphan patch
sloven & thriving. Something out
of a comfy little Britannic village
sitcom, almost. But weedy
& stallion & senselessly theatric—toxic
somehow to the commonweal. It screams
frontiersmanship. Cracker vitalism. That CTE
stick-to-itiveness that is these Estados
Unidos incarnate. It is in toto the enigma I know
to be Florida.
The chicken & waffles at Bistro Palms
could warm the cockles of any old liver-spotted
Hyperion. C-suite beachflesh
like squeezed lemons. Tax-deductible
sunburns. Mussel skyscrapers cold & fetal beside the ice
company in Apalachicola. This might as well be my aloe
vera theodicy. The Gulf conundrum: who cares
about Medicare graft, fent mills, skinny monsoon
indemnities, dental debt, or extended
warranty SWAT teams when those brushstrokes
of pink & aquamarine start to stylize
the eventide off St. George Island? So what
if some sleaze triple-swipes you for a roof
he refashioned out of Uncrustables, Bondo, &
armpit grease? When you see the eight
pm shadowplay scintillate on those Cinnabon
soffits, you’ll smirk amnesiac. Have another
mojito in the meantime. I just put in for a round
of tapas bowfin. & dessert: the saucy white
deco of buildings blurring past as we whiz
back to the capital—to yon metropole, yon
omphalos. It’s just dusk enough for me to pull
faces in the rearview & feign cutthroat. A fibrous
swashbuckler like Sonny Crockett or Travis
McGee, with more than my share
of sulk. I can almost see Achilles Murat—monsieur
blubber—scowling down from his chateau
on Polaris, wrathful that some free lunch hillbilly is
swaggering so surehanded along his Forgotten
Coast.
They’re all waiting for me
behind The Wilbury, a flight of toilet
bowl tequila shots at standby. The whir
of signage on Gaines Street is peak
moodboard for this sensitive young
seer, or so I tell myself. & Don Henley’s yacht
sloth warble basically ratifies
my suspicions. The earworm: one of
these nights, one of these
crazy old nights; & I can only say
touché. In the alley orthogonal
to The Bark, I’m still saying touché
over two hours later to no
one discernible—weathering another
Ziploc of sniff & some Kremlin
cosmonaut shit. It’s pouring
snow in Tallahassee in the ides
of April. All I know is we
best sort the Twisted
Teas before 2am. I’d row your gondola
through a grotto of Tweas
if I could. They taste succinctly
like you turned up
a hummingbird feeder. No I don’t
mind that all that citrus ashes
through the wonton lining
of my duodenum. That’s tomorrow’s
predicament. Down here we always deal
with mañana, mañana.
Men & women in a muggy bedsit.
Men & women stacked
like cupholder change
on bean bag, boneless
futon. Ongoing: a most
spermicidal game of finger
& thigh Tetris. At daybreak
the women retire & the men palpate
their elysian snail trails for a while
more. Some favorites: the low-slung
Pennsylvanian making much of a darkling
pixie cut; the 90-pound bottle
blonde who quadruple fists
firewater; the far upcountry
poetess who smoothbored
a hole through my guise
of hayseed satyr with her hazel
beholders (& on Hallows’ Eve, no
less). To all of them silently
I inquire—care if I fall
by and glean you later? This
stones us for a moment, & stricken
we ossify in our own oily
id. But, with lunchtime testing
the fortitude of those Shenzhen blackout
blinds, it’s almost bathetic to admit
what we’ve genuinely been after: esprit
de corps—just me & the guys against
this bleh, excruciatingly bourgeois
Wednesday, passing a flask
of impromptu joy back & forth, phooey
on the Kali Yuga.
We should probably call it, but how
bout a toot for the road? Or a mushed
up Addy if we’ve really, truly
redlined. A pinch of brotherly
aftercare: make certain you take those dark
net Percocets before the garbage
truck backs up, beeping like seven
doomsaying trumpets, & dumps what’s left
of your serotonin into the Leon
County landfill.
Curbside, hem-hawing ahead of my mystery
meat Lyft, & it begins to drizzle. Begins to
comedown. I’d assuredly flunk
a piss quiz or thyroid panel
as things stand. TMJ, tremors, slingshot
cortisol & all. But, from nowhere, sweet
shimmery deus ex machina, an eggshell
Testarossa clips into frame. Looks
like you could use a lift—volunteers a tan
man in Ray-Bans & torrid flamingo
sport coat…
This is how I want you
to remember me, Florida: throttling
muscled & melancholic through your new
cities of the tropics.
Ian Hall was brought up in Kentucky, but did a long, fruitful stint in North Florida.