for Jacqui Disler

the ghost of any breeze
            will fly
            under the stars
I serve
            buoyant
born of the air
        of silence and invisibility
and that which swims past you
            in algae water or
            silt water or
            fresh water sewer spilled
                        into the primal residuals of
                        Lake Ponchartrain
 
she rises
            like a bride
            a nun of love and the moon
            an endangered white bird
go up               the delta
            up the river
crossing in still light at Memphis
curving at Osceola – a seasonless banal yellow that
            is camouflage to
            shoot outs and battles
            a vortex of death
reach
            the steamy fingers
            not now an eleven o clock
            push at your shins
            bubbling like kittens
past Marion still in lockdown
and it will take your eyes
            the gridiron of
                        farms to factories
the ravening      the rapine
            the sprawl of petit-bourgeois
            in insulated ghettos
the sky at noon is pink in Illinois
            each day a metal haze
            mixed luck
            a greater throng of
people in Chicago
            where ya can’t get
            neither spark or rain
 
 
            2
 
as people we suffer
            by the constraints of
                        our own stupidity
thus we birth upon each other
            pain and evil
ecosystems broken by automobile air conditioning.
be aware that even jogging reserve officers
            huff discourse on moral superiority.
they have forgotten the nightmare
            that every crucifixion is a carnival
            that goodness gets arrested
            and that you can buy a flag
                        at a truck stop
                        along with a burnt plate of liver and onions
species fascism is ignored here
            because the cashier
            brings the counter-forgotten car keys
            she’s a snappy senior
            on the swing shift
            that includes Studs at breakfast after Last Call
my flag is stamped
            made in America
            is made of cotton
            submergence
the vapor of the dead
            is always on the skin
 
 
            3
 
but now I smoke the ash
            to a transience in evolution
a drug induced passive dejection
            parallel in my fancy
            to the chart of toxins
let me be explicit:
            landfill proportions
                        disappearing wetlands
            the backwash of river levee
            and water rechanneling
                        is coastal erosion…
she’s a wet thing
            a folding of moisture
            with ready caress
            easy in air or earth
            stunned only by the burnt circles
                        of government testing
            innocent to the tortures of
                        super-colliders and
                        hurricane walls
the Americanization of Louisiana:
            more brutality in the mud
            legacy paraded as franchise novelty
her response is fast creeping vines
            a dream come true
            a misspelling of the DNA
            a raw crime in a sorry state.