Editor’s Note: This NaPoWriMo was co-authored with a fellow member of the Stupid Genius Brain Trust named Sherlita Varnado.  I first encountered her at a writing forum called Writer’s Unified and have been engrossed in an extensive study of the curvature of the fingers of her pen hand since that time.  I write as one long gone from the city whose heart still lives along the bank of a canal in Kenner where my brother and his friend Tavares caught an alligator garfish and lived to tell about it.  She fills in all of my foregone knowledge as one still present in the vibrancy Cajun country who still smells of Creole.

smells of
gumbo
not like
you cook

people
gumbo
brass bands
boogie
beignets
craw fish
creole
crab legs
plantation
politics
pool
halls

an aroma
that sticks
to you
and if
bottling
souvenir
scents
for the
return trip
they’d read
"made on
magazine"

stinks of
harlem
not a city
but an
abusive
bastard
known only
to us
as drunk
uncle
whom disappeared
from life
at age 7
not of sudden
death
but certain
detachment

this
odor of his
aftermath
reminds me
of a
cigar box
Aunt Donna
kept under her
couch cushion
when she told
us to go
and fetch

all we knew
was that it
made her easy

she found relaxation

while
the heart
of the city
banged
like a dilla beat

below sea level
but
bounce music
and God who
wrote the sky
uplifts the
black
community

when the rain
bleeds despondence
still there’s a
second line
uptown
in the 7th ward
9th ward
your ward
and
in my ward

Mondays
we serve
red beans
and rice
some days
in shotgun
houses
moon-bruised
fingers
redo braids

another day
mothers read
articles released
by Times-picayune

"another murder"

their eyes
explode
then
intermix with
the reds
of the sun

still
this
city
lingers
like an
off white
delta 88
never
seeming
to leave
our driveway
beyond
the week
of my
brother’s
initial
purchase
making for
convenient
outdoor
storage
and a poor
replacement
for a front
porch

we are
permanent
hangers on
like pools
of water
for 5 weeks
or more
Harry Lee
for sheriff
Louisiana
legacy
textbook
and i’m convinced
that somewhere
the Kingfish
still runs
this town

i don’t
know her
like i used to
she still
smells
of creole.

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