You can buy matzo ball soup in Boca Raton
because my mom’s family,
like the cast of a dozen sitcoms,
streamed South in 1971
to trade subway cars and frostbite
for shuffleboard and skin cancer
along the coast of South Florida.
Lapsed, in all but appetite,
they were swiftly followed by
steaming trainloads of pastrami,
to supply the little mom
and pop shops surfacing
in a million hastily built
strip malls, where once,
only alligators dined.

And today, as a few survivors
struggle North to nest with
their aging children,
they leave behind
a landscape, where
even those without
a drop of Brooklyn in their veins;
yes, even those with an affection for
Rick Scott and Marco Rubio;
and even those who drive past
the shuttering strip malls in souped-up
cars, packing heat and
toasted on weed,
can satisfy their
preposterous desire
for Matzo ball soup.