Key West – One Sentence at a Time

Despite what the brochures imply with their bikini babes and sunny skies, paradise is NOT always the fragrance of frangipani from your front porch while sipping steaming, sugary Cuban con leche with supple breezes tickling your bare shoulders over the tinny voice of the Conch Train conductor, because – trust me on this – you will, occasionally, get stung by a mosquito.

-Katie Leigh

Key West, FL

Did I come to Key West to feel sad, to desperately miss Billy’s baritone voice the second he slipped off the stage, to stand on a corner with two almost-strangers for twenty minutes waiting for a called cab that never came while thinking of home with utter longing, later looking into a car’s window, staring at my hair, wondering if I should get it cut short for some upcoming over-the-computer interview, then happening upon Finnegan’s Wake, a pub where I could already taste the English chocolate stout; the gull’s staccato screeches interrupt me, I scratch my itchy fingers on concrete, and feel less sad or maybe even happy.

-Jonathan De Young

Carlisle, PA

 Santiago’s

The condensation on my glass of fruity sangria made my fingers wet as I lifted it to my face to smell the citrus, apples and red wine and then gulped down its cool goodness, like a baby that hadn’t been nursed all night.

-Jennifer Cullen

Jupiter, FL

As I sipped my lime infused Corona from my perch at Caroline’s restaurant, I watched the parade of hand-entwined couples in tie-dyed shirts walk below the New Orleans-style balconies on Duval Street while the old song ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of These’ floated through the air; Ah – the 70’s.

-Jan Jacobson

Ottawa, Canada

The elevator ride up to the roof of the La Concha requires optimism—an expectation that this sunset will be worth the claustrophobic journey—because your arm will press into the flesh of the sweaty man on your left, and you will inhale the stench of cheap beer, practically tasting it, and you will be required to laugh when you hear a stranger call out both your first and last names because you’ve failed to remove your Key West Literary Seminar nametag—yet you endure it all for the promise of so much color drowning in the horizon; but, this is the dark side (not humor, not poetry though maybe science fiction) because when you step out of the elevator, your view is obstructed by the sight of your mother-in-law, here in Key West, along with half a dozen of her friends—their faces have all been signed by the same plastic surgeon, pulled and tucked into the facial equivalent of a frozen contortionist—and you know these faces wouldn’t have the same power to distract you if back in Boca Raton, but here in Key West, you totally miss it when the sun goes down.

-Jennifer Gilman-Porat

Delray Beach, FL

Walking on Key West’s Duval Street licking my ice cream cone, I hesitated at the bar’s open door where loud laughter, the odor of stale beer, a sequined singer and a Drag Show sign caused me to push past the man at the threshold for a better look.

-Whitney Ransome

Baltimore, MD

Although I sit alone at a café table for two, I am anything but, with steel drums pelting sounds of Trinidad by the hands of a giant ebony man, his skin glistening and slick as a baby seal’s, a wide welcoming smile beckoning me to join the fray of joy all around, roosters crowing, chicks clucking nervously under tourists’ tables and sandaled toes, waitresses passing by with Blue Heaven’s mile-high key lime pie and how can I resist when my lunch is set before me sending scents of blackened buttery shrimp and cool citrus coleslaw wafting through my nostrils, until I can stand it no more and take that first delectable bite that is Key West.

-Terri Steel

Baltimore, MD

Key West requires a tolerance for icy cold chardonnay, kindness and chaos; unzoned, its mansions nuzzle raucous bars and noisy laundromats, as ocean breezes waft the silent scents of soap and honeysuckle.

-Celia Wexler

Alexandria, VA

Standing Outside Elizabeth Bishop’s Key West House

Standing outside the once stately 19^th C clapboard house in Key West where Elizabeth Bishop lived for many years,

no smell of jasmine,

no taste of mango,

no purring of cats,

reading a tarnished literary landmark plaque on a once white wooden gate swung open to ruin:

an unsightly yard strewn with debris:

• rotten plants punctuated with rusted tools, sticking up like markers,
• a Harley parked on an overgrown path to an apparently always open front door,

I see another plaque of a bygone time that reads

HIPPIES: GO AROUND THE BACK.

-Pamela Gay

Binghamton, NY

It’s an average day as tree frogs laud the end of soft rains and the beginnings of fragrant breezes, and it matters not that the world is wet, I indulge in one more sip of strong coffee and board my scooter, hand twisting the throttle, and as I dodge the wave of boat people on Duval, I remind myself this average is paradise.

-Judy Garrison

Athens, GA

 Where the Wired Go Slow

Key thing to hear when in this nest

is ease the pace of my endless race

so I can smell a rose’s rot

and feel the sand hot on my toes

as I taste life with gentle lust

before I watch my sun set west.

-Dan Ornstein

Albany, NY

 

“Hello, darlings. How you girls doin?” the sculpted cabbie asked us as my mother, with a barely audible grunt and a radiant smile, hoisted herself onto the seat, the Fort Zach salt on our lips and the sunset receding behind us an even brighter pink than the taxi.

-Barbara Roswell

Baltimore, MD

Key West Bed and Breakfast

Under a midnight blue sky at the moment before sleep, the moon visits my balcony and winds push through white cotton curtains, into the room, through halls of art and lemon-soaked pine, and all through this pink house, majestic in stature, humble in spirit, where warm coconut loaf awaits me in the morning and I know I’ve come home.

 

-Katherine Clay

Joshua Tree,  CA