New Orleans13 Comments

2 Worlds

Zouxzoux

The outsiders blew into town drivin just a little too fast in their fancy foreign car laughin at our roadside yard sales and our little café, Lita’s Chicken Shack, where you can get a blue plate special of turnip greens, sweet potatoes, cornbread, your choice of three meats, sweet tea and a slice of Lita’s caramel cake every Friday of your life for $5.95. They stopped and nosed around the 45’s and the LP’s thinkin we wouldn’t know a “vintage” Blues record if it hit us in the face but, truth is, we’re the ones been singin that tune since … Continue reading 2 Worlds

New Orleans2 Comments

Thirteenth Summer

Zouxzoux

A chestnut horse rides better bare-backed with sun burned hands giving him his head, mamma said you couldn’t come in the house when she was workin’ but she didn’t say I couldn’t go out. Beans grow fast, most morninins I go out and pick ‘em, being careful that they’re filled out before I pull ‘em from the vine. Sometimes I’m not sure so I leave ‘em and worry they’ll grow old and dry before the next pickin’ and something bad’ll happen to me for my misjudgment. I like to watch when you curry your horse, brushin’ him till his coat … Continue reading Thirteenth Summer

New Orleans7 Comments

Unknown/Unknowable 2006-2009

Zouxzoux

I’m finally saying good-bye, to you of the laughing blue eyes that hide the dark purple of bruises and crimson of clotted blood. I thought you were one thing but you were many instead. The lushness of passion and the thorns of disparagement were all a part of you, but I didn’t know. I only knew that I became entrenched like a log caught in an underwater world of clinging reeds until I became the one who was clinging. I say good-bye to you now when I couldn’t before. As the years passed, the current tugged me loose and I … Continue reading Unknown/Unknowable 2006-2009

New Orleans8 Comments

All Out Of Happy, Passed

Zouxzoux

This house is starting to feel like home again in spurts and starts – not all the time every day, but more often than not. It’s been a long time since I felt at home. This house felt like the underside of an overpass and I felt homeless in my own skin. It crept up on me, this feeling, it crept up and took over my life, my thoughts, my emotions and held me hostage for nine long years, invading my very core and changing who I was until I didn’t know who I was. This house waited with the … Continue reading All Out Of Happy, Passed

New Orleans19 Comments

Hank and Karen

Zouxzoux

You’re the kind of man mamma warned me about – always with the sexy smirk and your hand metaphorically in the honey pot when it’s not handing some chick her fourth dirty martini or, no, I take that back – especially when you’re handing her that fourth drink because you know it’s the one that’s gonna tip her over the edge of judiciousness and into deliciousness. Yeah, mamma said don’t trust a man with caramel-colored eyes, especially when he calls you his Muse and says makin’ love to you breaks loose the words and they all come a-tumblin out through … Continue reading Hank and Karen

New Orleans12 Comments

A Day In The Crescent

Zouxzoux

  It’s another balmy day in paradise. I push down the plunger in the French Press, inhaling the earthy aroma of the blackest of coffees called Community. The morning paper lies on the coffee table waiting for its unfolding, opening and adjusting shake. “Sneaking Sally Through The Alley” is dancing out of the Boze, WWOZ accommodating its listeners with the best music in the country, bar none. Noise from the street wafts through the open French doors: the rummmm-rummmm of the city bus, the high-pitched laughter of kids on Christmas break, the artificially cheerful greeting of “order when you’re ready!” … Continue reading A Day In The Crescent

New Orleans10 Comments

The Time In Between

Zouxzoux

It’s the day after Christmas and the rain falls, first a light mist just to get us used to it, then a steady falling like the currents of the river two blocks away. The air smells clean and wet, the birds are chirping and fluttering in the old pear tree – are they singing good wishes for the New Year as the rain washes away the doubts and regrets of the past to make way for the hopes and anticipation of the future? Or is it only my foolish daydreaming once again, wishing away reality. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Shared on dVerse Poets … Continue reading The Time In Between

New Orleans5 Comments

Without

Charlotte Hamrick

Do the stars sparkle for me? Do they cast their light upon my wandering head as I lie gazing into a universe beyond my reach. Do they know that green eyes blue eyes brown eyes all look above and wish upon them in unison with one tremulous voice from many places that have no shine. Do the stars sing for me? Do they look down at where I lay my head and whisper a celestial lullabye to all lost children tethered to their despair with invisible chains that cannot be seen, cannot be cut , but is felt every minute … Continue reading Without