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Mona Lisa Saloy.
I Had Forgotten the Loud

laughing locusts do at night,

the smell of hot grass

steaming under end-of-summer rain.

 

Hurricane Elena was prayed away from New Orleans

by Holy women, Haints, and Loas.

Hurricanes, thecrescent city crusade,

like bayou music from Allen Toussaint,

the R & B basic brew:

“Hey there sugar-dumplin’

let me tell you somethin’. . . .”

from King Floyd or Irma Thomas,

who used to be called colored singers,

or chitterling-circuit crooners.

 

New Orleans leaves a honey taste in my mouth.

The cracked boulevards and weeping willows

shade bare front porches

and call her children home.

I holler, “Hey-now!”

Come southern grown, like

mirliton and magnolias.

 

Works

Saloy, Mona Lisa. Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems. New Odyssey Series. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Pr., 2005.

Saloy, Mona Lisa. Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems. New Odyssey Series. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Pr., 2014.


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