Lagniappe [it's American French, look it up]
Jazzy and French-descended the scent of
beignets and red beans creates ambience.
Pot holes lie on one way streets waiting for
their next motorized victims.
These, my roots, the tether that snaps me back
when I’ve gone too far away.
How can I forget afternoons on the porch and tire swings?
Snowball stands in sizzling summers remain.
A little girl there waits with her weekend bag in an
old white shotgun house that is now a preschool.
Dad is picking her up from school this Friday.
Last weekend she stayed at home with Mom.
Chain-linked fences line the broken sidewalks of flat,
dingy concrete streets that bear names like Marigny and Elysian Fields.
Lawns streaked with oak tree roots
that have grown above ground and taken over
remind me of my beginnings.
The first five years were so hazy and I am left with the remnant,
a ghost existence in a distant city that is somehow close to my heart,
a city where you can eat good 24 hours and 7 days.
“Baby” is the term of endearment everyone answers to.
Where windows and doors appear beautiful with intricate iron patterns,
but are only used to deter the effects of the high crime rate.
I remember gumbo boiling,
the cool leathery smell of “Muh’ Dear’s” house,
and the way the door from the garage to the back hallway CHANG'd brassily.
Manila-colored tile lined the floors.
We were spanked at school with wooden rods
from the window shades.
The tub in Ms. Mitchell’s house had porcelain feet.
Oh I love the old oaks that line the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue,
the graceful antebellum houses complete with parlors,
Queen Anne furniture and painted in Easter colors with white trim.
The city is Gumbo: the roux, its history, the ingredients, its people.
I have history there. A little girl with divorced parents
who used to live on Adams Street in a yellow duplex with her mom
thinking that parents in separate houses was natural.
C.M.
Jazzy and French-descended the scent of
beignets and red beans creates ambience.
Pot holes lie on one way streets waiting for
their next motorized victims.
These, my roots, the tether that snaps me back
when I’ve gone too far away.
How can I forget afternoons on the porch and tire swings?
Snowball stands in sizzling summers remain.
A little girl there waits with her weekend bag in an
old white shotgun house that is now a preschool.
Dad is picking her up from school this Friday.
Last weekend she stayed at home with Mom.
Chain-linked fences line the broken sidewalks of flat,
dingy concrete streets that bear names like Marigny and Elysian Fields.
Lawns streaked with oak tree roots
that have grown above ground and taken over
remind me of my beginnings.
The first five years were so hazy and I am left with the remnant,
a ghost existence in a distant city that is somehow close to my heart,
a city where you can eat good 24 hours and 7 days.
“Baby” is the term of endearment everyone answers to.
Where windows and doors appear beautiful with intricate iron patterns,
but are only used to deter the effects of the high crime rate.
I remember gumbo boiling,
the cool leathery smell of “Muh’ Dear’s” house,
and the way the door from the garage to the back hallway CHANG'd brassily.
Manila-colored tile lined the floors.
We were spanked at school with wooden rods
from the window shades.
The tub in Ms. Mitchell’s house had porcelain feet.
Oh I love the old oaks that line the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue,
the graceful antebellum houses complete with parlors,
Queen Anne furniture and painted in Easter colors with white trim.
The city is Gumbo: the roux, its history, the ingredients, its people.
I have history there. A little girl with divorced parents
who used to live on Adams Street in a yellow duplex with her mom
thinking that parents in separate houses was natural.
C.M.
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