“We do not dig graves or put caskets into graves any longer. The decision was made and funeral homes were notified that families and funeral homes would have to supply grave-digging personnel.”
— Ed Mazoue, New Orleans City Real Estate Administrator and Person in Charge of the City’ s Cemeteries
There’ s nothing but mud. The ground looks dry and firm,
but underneath is a stew of storm. Stout shovels, rusted,
grow gummed and heavy with what I heft and rearrange.
Progress is slow.
Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.
As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.
Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping 'tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.
Engines grinding, rotating, smokin', gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.
I was birthed restless and elsewhere
gut dragging and bulging with ball lightning, slush,
broke through with branches, steel
I was bitch-monikered, hipped, I hefted
a whip rain, a swirling sheet of grit.
Scraping toward the first of you, hungering for wood, walls,
unturned skin. With shifting and frantic mouth, I loudly loved
the slow bones
of elders, fools, and willows.
Aloft between heaven and them,
I babble the landscape — what staunch, vicious trees,
what cluttered roads, slow cars. This is my
country as it was gifted me — victimless, vast.
The soundtrack buzzing the air around my ears
continually loops ditties of eagles and oil.
I can’ t choose. Every moment I’ m awake,
aroused instrumentals channel theme songs,
speaking
what I cannot.
