Category: New Orleans

New Orleans6 Comments

Repetition Interrupted

Zouxzoux

It makes me anxious, reading your words. I’ve done my years of anxious, of constantly running three steps ahead of a fit. I threw that shit away in 2009 after my good altruistic intentions got slammed by a sledgehammer of entrenched mediocrity. And that was just in my work life. Friends come and go and I became caught up in a frenzy of mindless socializing, of running from event to event not of my choosing, hitting the streets in a dervish dance from bar to parade to fest to second line and guzzling the latest cocktail de jour or micro … Continue reading Repetition Interrupted

New Orleans2 Comments

What’s Shoes Got to do With It, Part 2

Zouxzoux

All night long she keeps one eye on the tables, one eye on the stage and her third eye on every sweaty hand that wanta creep up her skirt. Wearing a skirt’s a bad idea in a place like this but the manager says if she can’t show a little leg then he’ll show her the door and she needs the tips the sweaty ole hands drop on her tray. It’s the wee hours of the mornin’, Dixie Delicious is dancin’ up on stage with some big ole white feathers hooked to her arms, floatin’ around her head lookin’ like … Continue reading What’s Shoes Got to do With It, Part 2

New Orleans10 Comments

February 14

Zouxzoux

I don’t need to hear you say “I love you”, I want to know you do by the look in your eyes, the touch of your hand, the way you listen when I talk. I don’t need candy, flowers, diamonds or trips around the world. I only need you to be there during my darkest hours when I cover my head and wail like a lost child because life has left me bereft. I need you by my side when it counts: when the hurricane is coming, when loved ones die, when friends desert, when I fall into the biggest, … Continue reading February 14

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