Tiki Cartouche
emerged from the shadow.
Katya did a double take.
“OMG Tiki, how did you get here?
I thought you were in Hawaii!!”
“It’s a long story,” Tiki sighed.
Tiki was a distant cousin, of Katya’s,
he had crucial friends, Tiki was not someone to mess with, indeed
Tiki Cartouche was a fishing GOD!
He had a long history that started eons before the fishpond. But no one remembered that.
Tiki had a reputation in Kahalu’u.
And if you stayed in Kahalu’u and lived
you were respected and feared.
Suzy Pacu from South America knew
even the Japanese Koi twins, Hiroshi and Sachi
who always banked left
when they saw his face
peering down at them above the surface pondering their demise.
They shit little fish pellets, escaping over a
bubbling Guinness
with friends on Fishbrook
and when Sachi
FISH-tagrammed a pic of that huge ugly face
peering down into their living room
it horrified them even more.
Astounding what with progress and all
how terrorized they all remained
by that wooden skeleton wearing shell earrings, with shells for eyes.
Lucy, the catfish, reported of his hulking shadow. She’d heard the loud drone beyond and
on his shoulders sat many white creatures with wings.
Lucy was smart; she had called them egrets, which had mystified them all. The egrets outnumbered them ten to one. It was bad enough they had to watch for Sadie the Fishhawk, who dropped her prey onto the muddy banks. Sadie had cannibalized poor Archie in front of all of them. Archie had been in denial about his weight.
“Better to be safe,” Lucy had said
“and whatever you do
don’t stare into his eyes or he will pluck them out and shell you.”
“What is shell,” they gasped among themselves, for no-one wanted to admit they didn’t know.
And they quivered panic-stricken, burying themselves inches below the mud.
So the story went, and Tiki was not about to
correct any of their foolish notions. No indeed
Tiki was destined for greatness, and even Katya would be amazed.
“It’s like this Katya,” Tiki began.
Corney Press 