This April, Fantastic Floridas is being taken over, twice weekly, by the Orlando-based seul poetry quarterly, as part of our Florida Lit Mag excerpt series. Poems from the pages of seul will appear on Tuesdays and Fridays throughout National Poetry Month. Read all the poems here.
We’ll never know what Tilikum was thinking
Let me make up a trick
My turn to play
I tugged her long silky, so pretty hair into the pool
I wanted to taste it
She is so light, so compliant
I could not help myself, my tongue wanted more
She flies sideways this time, makes strange sounds
I have a memory of this, another woman, a man
She is finally pried from my mouth
Always I will remember her taste
What she was thinking
I have only seconds. I know this.
He won’t let go.
No, Tili, no
Not this, not right.
Moments before
He and I were having a lovely moment
We were in our “relationship” time
showing off our bond to a small group of tourists
Viewing us from below, a window
to his world underwater cell
poor people watching
poor me