New Orleans

 

The way a wasp’s nest hints at the thick

of a Pan’s flute above a doorway, or the way

the American flag morphs into a new Guernica

 

when left soaked underwater for too long. I can see

the ease in which the treachery comes, prowling,

sleek— as though feeling a palm to my cheek bent,

 

crescent, set to raid my breast… All that Spanish Moss

and plywood just spat out in heaps. But then comes

the heat, humid and tender, licking slow, all about

 

my body. This summer air so ferocious

you could nearly swear it has the appetite

of a lover’s tongue at first kiss, or, the hunger

 

for that once known taste, that stirring,

that rips you open— so desperate on me now

it is like the memory of a phantom leg, kicking,

 

trying alone, to wade in the water.