Postcards from Florida

Death roll me like alligators in love.
Let’s eat crappy fish sticks in front of the orcas 
while the orange juice sweat stains my shirt collar. 
Wish you were broiling in Florida with me. 

Let’s eat crappy fish sticks in front of the orcas,
they can eat the rotten mermaid corpse. 
Wish you were broiling in Florida with me
trying to saddle one of those stray manatees. 

They can eat the rotten mermaid corpse 
while you eat the key lime curd out of my beard. 
Trying to saddle one of those stray manatees 
as the last of our hurricane booze floods our blood. 

While you eat the key lime curd out of my beard 
death roll me like alligators in love
as the last of our hurricane booze floods our blood
while the orange juice sweat stains my shirt collar. 

Thomas Page is a poet and writer from Brandywine, Maryland. He is an MFA poetry student working on his thesis project, The Decimated, at the University of South Florida. His poem, “Memorial Scholarship,” was published in Unstamatic, and his review of Doug Anderson’s “Undress, She Said” appears in the Spring 2023 issue of The Florida Review.

Why we chose this piece: Never thought we’d see a Florida-themed pantoum, but here we are. And we love it. The humor is fantastic, and the imagery is vivid as hell. Who knew a death roll could be romantic?