Katrina Suite |
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Epigraphs Written Above Water my past is a field of sleepwalking majorettes
too poor to buy white boots —Frank Stanford Past high water marks, past wildest conjecture —Sterling A. Brown You feel like skipping But the costume Wants a more processional step Three days of rain, not Biblical But more than this ground Could take Standing water everywhere —Lorenzo Thomas Blue Tarp The magnificent sight of the city rising “Lake Ponchartrain is just too damn big” As we circle the shining path of water We descend over the neighborhoods reaching for signs of damage The first color of something amiss Those vivid blue tarps are not Swimming pools They are patching big ass holes where the rain came in and in and inundated the insides of the houses and Washed around inside like a big mold-bearing washing machine now gutted My mind jumps to another part of the south Dale Earnhart fans knew something was wrong when they covered car Number 3 with the blue tarp that spelled troubled Fairy in a teacup on royal street somehow survives this tiny porcelain being comfortably curled in a teacup on display her delicate limbs just fit against the cool curve Transbluency +++ My First Floats Great skulls and crossbones Disorienting in their grandeur Pink flesh of Nausica The Suitors of Circe transformed into huge Swine Then “Chocolate City” Mayor dangling a huge Hershey’s kiss DEMA Olympics event: Refrigerator Hurling The Big Queasy A paper maché depiction of A huge vomit stream The 17th Street breach filled with tears Kids watch perched on ingenious wooden carts bolted atop tall ladders Item on menu of Coffee Pot Restaurant: FEMA special $795 a piece +++ Aftermath Blues Waiting for the other cup to drop In the Café du Monde None of your trusted servers are available Would you care to join me Blank to think the blues came here After great pain a formal feeling comes to a deep capacity for melancholy baby dolls marching down Storyville streets dressed in next to nothing and shivering a bit Stairway to heaven electric violin Remembers me a loud speaker dirge heard after anonymous high school wreck Now here near where the itinerant astronomer used to set up shop: See Saturn’s Rings for a dollar Or two. The tables turn over Will I remember to feel This way again Drew up after I Saw the wreckage The size of twenty Manhattans? All I am good for it seems Is to curl up, ache and sleep Until body’s regeneration Can kick back in What I’m getting at is what I saw I don’t want to be just a silent witness But how can I express this I was in the middle of a poem on September 11, 2001 Maybe now I can go back and finish it now after I’ve seen a little of what these people are going through And that they will continue on That family lived here for three generations Sure I have kept on But something deep inside the core of my head and gut Stopped up somehow Katrina was a terrorist but now she’s gone What little sisters will she have? All the houses that still stand have empty eyes One window even had a curtain But in the lower 9th Ward it was all blown away Houses on top of cars Stairs to nowhere A surrealist mess in the neutral ground Plowed to the side by the core of disengineers Who informed one who stuck it out “Your city is dead” Who are they to decide? Spray-painted everywhere is this symbol: It means no Body found in this house I also saw spray-painted in black Help Help! Dave says no one wants to take the hex signs off the front In case the angel of death comes back The force of the waves past the eaves His home – bottom floor stripped After everything floated around for a while Get it out before the mold gets in Little plastic playhouse tumbled amongst the trees family mucking out the next door neighbors’ Where the son had to cut a hole in the roof to get out New Orleans will never be the same But come visit and do what you can At every turn: Thanks for coming down (Lundi Gras, 2006) ++++ Pal’s Bar “The cement that held The neighborhood together” +++ Consider the Removes The Apple trademark symbol light alter’d into crescent Moon and Star with masking tape by DJ Infidel — faces the dancers as he mixes the Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself. With Remarks Upon the Remedy for Slavery. Farmers! Housewives! Children! : The President of the United States Appeals to You Personally Mutual relation of masters and slaves as taught in the Bible: a discourse preached in the First Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia, on Sabbath morning… Without locking Earrings on either side How do we handle the influx after the explosion The country that treats its own this way No poetry after ___________this Too Much Information on the overload How can I free associate organically anymore with google scholar on the prowl How can we treat a child thusly Thrust of this argument Helps us to imagine how How can there be poetry After such stillness after the shock Pre and post imagined And on the roof top Time has sped up Somehow I am late Stunned And glam Eyed in the light In the photograph flash I asked my child to write her name and she does I stare hungrily at her face in the dark |
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