I.
Over the swamps,
And the water that flows
From the ocean, and sprouts
Into puddles on cemetery fields?
Dragonflies are resting
On the eye lids
Of sleeping alligators.

At night is dancing men
In the alleys, and on the cobble stone,
And in the trees, twisting
Around the thickness of the air.
They walk over bridges to heaven,
And back again, as the ground
Turns to bats, then, to dust.

II.
The air often smells of vomit,
And the people eat sea bugs;
A great repitiousness of ideas
Has been sewn into the soil,
And thus into the feet
of the rugged folks? hounding
for daiquiris, and boudin.

Children, eight, and nine,
Are firing bb’s at passing cars,
And the cars are pretending to be basketball
Stars, throwing trash into trashcans
Tilted along the roads.
And making it.
My dad says, at least, to not look at the women.
He says here they belong to someone. III.
So I marvel at the graves;
Raised in the cemetery’s, so the dead
Can leave easily. And I ate the food.
And at the end of it the humid air
Made my tears a hot, and salted soup.
Coming home we took the bridge to heaven.
And on the way down saw it all for the first time:

Saw bloated college students
Muddy the streets of New Orleans with bile.
Saw crackling waters, and tangled trees.
Saw seniors glued to their porches
And crickets die in heavy air,
Before they sank, deep
Into the black swamps below the highway.