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.
Page prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee