(this flash poem appeared in Spillwords)
it seems like decades since I saw you last
yet it was just behind today
hidden in your voodoo alleys
your ghost shadows
your trombone shrieks
along the cobblestones
of bourbon street
I miss
our drives
across
lake pontchartrain
for
cappuccinos at sunrise
and strolls
along the levees
we huddled in a booth
under a flyer
advertising
a blood spatter expert
and kissed
like uncouth
high school kids
later
making love
in your shotgun house
the ghost of your
dead aunt
knocking about
then the night
you took
me
to
perdido st
where your lineage
kid ory
discovered louie
blowing his horn
when I left
we were unsettled
settling impossible
when we met
that ethereal halo
cloaked your being
and love sighed
those brilliant eyes surrendered
the left one a lazy wink
as it tilted south
reckoning
to life’s slam downs
to the torrents
that weren’t yours
to carry
yesterday
we laid in the yellow flowers
of peanut plants
in mossy grass near the lake
talking to the dragonflies
our tongues
licking each other’s sweat
tasting each other’s friction
cocooned in rapture
it seems like decades since I saw you last
your
biome on my skin
your
breath in my
soul
it didn’t matter
that the jelled orange moon
ignited
a creole horizon
or the stars blinked like sand dollars
plucked from the sea
we loved and lost
in a sky
full of magic
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