a poem is a sermon
It matters not how much the wind may blow, nor if the seas should rise up through the floor; the anchor of my craft is sunk below, and I am to this spot moored evermore. Should this fierce season flail its storms at me and seek to wrest my hold from this small spot, to […]
As if the hazel mud its edges flecked with dull green and salt-stain, cracked and peeling along the summer dry edges of the viaduct that ran its length, a brittle concrete spine, down through the creosote valley from cinder block to overpass were somehow host to hordes of unseen ghosts where once the heartless roots […]
The streets are filled with idle, itching hands, their owners on the prowl in vain pursuit of some pastime to fill the vacant hours in darkened rooms enswamped with summer heat. Without their cellphones, TV sets and games, and fast-food fare likewise beyond their grasp, how will the city’s folk be entertained? On what diversions […]
The summer in New Orleans melts ambition from your bones; and inspires dreams of northern climes, of much more temperate zones where flowers last a day or two before they start to wilt, and the ground does not suck ravenous at water where it’s spilt, where saunas are a novelty. Here, one does not require […]
The fetid dark sits on the house like a fat man at the bus stop, sweat pooled on the plastic seat too narrow for his sturdy frame, and the night jasmine’s heavy scent assaults the senses, cloying sweet, like the memory of his aftershave after the bus has come and gone; mixed with the bitter-sour […]
Continue reading "A June night like a fat man at a bus stop"
Like whirling dervishes they congregate around the bright lit porches and streetlamps, their bodies hurling like mad wax-winged clouds that seek where water meets with tender wood. Against their onslaught, darkened houses crouch low to the earth, hoping their bones are dry enough to seem less tempting to this horde, and seem to hold their […]
Down at the end of river road the houses show off concrete knees, with skirts drawn just above the mud that creeps up through the Augustine beginning early June. Some rivers, when they start, seem nothing like their parent ocean’s genes; they use the drying distance from the shore while they’re still condensation hung from […]