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I
went to the square once, only seventeen
black platform boots and naivete.
Cigars in the air and French in the streets
I chose my cards with careful concentration
while she smoked, all at ease. Seeming just another
of the gilded flower children who’d wandered south in the ’60s,
set up roots in the Quarter, bought their weed from the Ninth.
But anyone with half the sight could see the things
that pulsed around the hot pink cloth
adorned with yellow stars; her altar to the Goddess,
which held no runes for hearth or home.
Afterwards, on the Rue Burbon, I had only one purpose-
drinking to look like all the tourists.
Tried washing everything she’d just confirmed
off the residue of my brain. But everywhere I turned
smoke from black clove cigarettes assaulted my nose;
that sickly-sweet smell, like heaps of dead oranges
somehow worse than the smell that ever accompanies the Quarter.
Summer’s made her way down south
wrapped us up in her humid cloak
and the sun finally warms my bones.
No water in the streets now, just holes
in the skyline; cold concrete earth
dotted here and there, like stumps of old trees
slain by the winds. Down there they struggle on
hammers on nails on shotgun houses
centuries old, with new Romeo poles;
but its still quiet up here.
There’s more of us now to watch the life
running in frantic fear below, not a second to be lost;
all we have is endless time. So we watch
from third floor windows, safe in our lofty perches
where natives know not to venture.
From fire or flood, we are the attic-damned
who fled towards heaven to escape the hell
that killed us on rooftops and balconies;
the forgotten children who linger
in this city that burned and drowned.
