shreveport poem: two

Let me tell you about the Louisiana heat then,

clinging to the skin like a dress two sizes too small

And everywhere trees and brush and wilderness

and all alive and real and home grown

In the air even

The smells of the life within it

Still the shit chains linking together in neat little rows

Anywhere, USA

But also,

Often

Vibrant old buildings built on old piles of brick

Painted and crumbling

Nondescript churches and their small, white steeples

By faith and by works to keep the floodwaters at bay

The brick building drive thrus

Mammoth daiquiris in their white styrofoam cups

In a variety of colorfully named flavors

(2 for $11 during happy hour, which seems every day all night,

and forever)

And they burn down with us in the backseat

where the base vibrates the loudest

Where you can see the music’s rhythms play out against the rearview mirror

They burn down with us on back lawns where the insects

Unyielding creatures,

Lay in wait

defending the earth this vast old marshland

Full as it was with our kind

All those gilded shades of brown and beige and black skin together, humming

Like a series of connecting vines;

Rooted.