The Thrashing

Bonefish & Tarpon Trust and the Lower Keys Guides
Association received the first report of fish in the Florida
Keys exhibiting abnormal, spinning behavior in early
October 2023. Fish with the “spins” experience loss of
equilibrium, causing them to swim upside down in
repeated circles – Bonefish & Tarpon Trust

When the first sawfish spun –
thorned grey chainsaw nose
hurricaning in the shallows
of the backcountry, pale belly
whipping at sun through
the thin blue skin of water,
face to the scrape of seafloor –

only the broad sky was there
to see. It happened like this:
One endangered shark, then
another. One fisherman saw,
then another. On land,
we got word from the water.
Then they came to us. More

wound this way, faster until
they took flight onto the
sargassum and sand, glittering
last divine impossible breaths,
poison gulps they knew would
spread black deep in their drying
scales, oceanic suicide cult for

God knows why. It happened
like this: one washed up to
a man’s feet at a resort, its
skin sandpapering his Achilles.
Another reached toward the
fingers of a boy reaching for
a scallop shell seized in the sand

tide at the state park, the slick
side of its scales pleading
its secret. Grotesque offerings
made in the name of God
knows what, but surely
it prophesies more spinning.
See, already it has spread –

crabs flip across the jagged
black moons bouldering
the coast. Leatherjackets,
mojarra, goliath groupers
whirl circles in circles, desperate
to die. God knows what
shakes their brains. Not out

in the far-off flats, but all over
the ocean surrounding and
surrounding us and making
landfall – it nips at our calves
at this tip of the earth.
It happened like this: there
was no way left not to see.

Which sign, Lord, is this?
How close are our mouths
to mouthing seven and squeezing
our lids shut, clenching our fists,
puffing our chests to the sun
or to no sun at all, pitch black
swallow. What else, Lord,

could we have given
in the name of saving each
other? A little brick. A little
mortar. How long until
we are forced onto our backs,
erratic swings at the air, bones
hinging in places not intended

to bend, so desperate to make
the world outside of us stay
outside – but we are the same
vein and husk and gasp
and shuck of that world.
There’s no more balance.
This is the scorching away.

–

Emily Schulten is the author of three collections, including the forthcoming Easy Victims to the Charitable Deceptions of Nostalgia, 2023 White Pine Prize winner. Her work appears widely in literary journals. Schulten is Poet Laureate of Key West, where she is a Professor at The College of the Florida Keys.