Jobs
of Key West (past and present)
A marine biologist that swims with yellow-blotched
turtles, an artisan of thick Cuban cigars, a three-time winner of the Ernest
Hemingway lookalike contest at Sloppy Joe’s (that also feeds the six-toed cats cans
of tuna on the side), a writer looking for a new muse and finding it in the form of fuchsia corals, the
sunset and waves, in slices of Key lime pie and the pretty girls with Hibiscus
in their hair, a local band that only knows the chords to one song (Jimmy
Buffett’s Margaretville), a fisherman
that catches everything from pink shrimp, whiskered lobster, mahi mahi,
mangrove snapper, kingfish, red grouper, and shark, and makes trade with a
local restaurant for bottomless shots of Bahamian rum, a scuffed-up railroad worker (that tells the exotic ladies
of the night that he’s the real
eighth wonder of the world, the real
steamy locomotive, not Flagler’s toy train), a drunken bum that falls asleep
with the Atlantic wetting his toes and awakes with crab bites bruises that he
thinks are love marks, an on-foot only tour guide that stops in front of Elizabeth
Bishop’s house on White Street everyday and recites, “Florida—the state with
the prettiest name, the state that floats in brackish water…”
-Amelia Badri
-Amelia Badri
