Isaac

The black cat that lives under my stairs was out in the open, taking a shit next to a banana leaf shaking behind a fern. I should have known. If I had been religious then, I’d say the oval shroud looked like Mary, but the Mothers' time had yet to come. Isaac loomed.

At around eight p.m. the dogs started barking. The TV was absolute, full of dire prediction. Cats and dogs, they said. I was on the porch, and the fantastic cruelty of that hovering  was as of yet unknown.

Deciding I needed supplies, I walked over to Walgreens and bought a few lighters, a candle, some cigarettes and two Gatorades. As I waited in the checkout line, I caught a blurb from a TV reporter on CNN: “Widespread devastation possible in New Orleans.”

I better get home fast, I thought, and took a shortcut—through the hood, to see the deserted shotguns. To my surprise, people were everywhere. I passed a large black woman sitting on her porch and nodded solemnly, but she just looked at me—sort of confused. And I walked away

into the yellowing night with that unsettled countenance on my back. Then a man who was leaning against the wall called me a faggot, but I'd seen him around. He was an alcoholic. I realized, anyways, what they were saying to me was: “Be. Strong.”

Noticing the gusts of wind beginning to ruffle the trees, but emboldened by the suicidal bravery I saw in the children running around me, I hustled home, got on my computer, and turned on the TV. Then my heart sank. Apparently what was happening in the media world was far more important than what was actually happening outside.

Aided by the self-assurance of nearly 200,000 likes on Facebook and guided by the cyclic nature of national news coverage, Isaac was no longer a just a soon-to-be Category 1 hurricane packing high winds and a 10-foot storm surge—Isaac was now viral. “Possible widespread devastation” was now a communicable disease.

I was fucked.

I closed my laptop, turned off the TV, and sat on the couch to listen to the building wind and weigh my options. Evacuation would be pointless, I realized; I was already a willing participant, having posted “#Hurrication! J” on my wall that morning. How could I have been so god damned foolish, I wondered. Everyone was doing it though. 

So I sat there and thought. Smoked a pack of cigarettes and gathered by roommates mattresses to prop against the downstairs windows. And all else was silent. The power would likely be going out soon, so I retrieved my laptop and turned on the TV for some word from the outside world. It was bad: 215,000 “likes” at Isaac's back and a more defined center. The wind roared and receded, pulling and pushing the glass. A beam of dusty yellow light slipped past the edge of the mattress, extending through the hallway and sitting on the dirty kitchen floor. And there, a few cockroaches who had decided to ‘hunker down’ with me were belly-up on the floor. Suicide. Had it really come to that? Definitely.

Fated for disaster like the city I had come to love, if for only a while, and with the hopes of having my own children dashed, I threw the mattresses off the windows and embraced the storm. It was still pretty sunny out—but still, so eerie.

I took a moment to ‘like’ Isaac on Facebook (all of my friends and mom had) and started digging a small hole in the backyard to hold my remains. Which brings us to this moment.

5 p.m., Tuesday, August 28th. It’s raining. I am making final preparations for death. The bland, sordid atmosphere around me is fittingly divorced from that lonely wisp of air in the Gulf. Isaac churning toward me. Isaac—who I’d gladly shared with multiple friends—would now cover my bones.

I extend a grim wave to a neighbor—he’s new to the block, nice guy—sitting on his back porch. He watches sadly as I climb into my hole, fold my hands over my chest and shut my eyes. Then it occurs to me: I have no relationship with God—or my mother—and I might as well extend a hand. Now or never, as they say. After a quick prayer and a glance to the rotating clouds, I walk back inside and return with my laptop, lowering it with me into the shallow earth. Then bang out one last status, something encompassing, something that will remain after everything has been swept away:

“Hurrication!”

Emergency Room

I shook my knee, dipped my waist,

And convulsed down to the waiting room floor.

My love, I’m so glad I’m back; I almost died today—

In the worst kind of way. It was so dark.

I shook my knee, dipped my waist,

And convulsed down to the waiting room floor.

I was moaning, really chumping at my bones.

Ready to go.

So they sent me back to nurse Pork Chops—the last stop

At the biggest pinkest thing I’d ever, ever—I’m sure

You and I woulda had a couple,

But I was my feeling my lightheadedest, shivering.

You should have seen; I could have hardly joked if I wanted,

I was so dumbfounded. If you'd been there, you’d see.

Then Nurse Chops asks if I’d like, like, to sit down—

And would I? I cocked back to the gristly old sass.

“Like?" I said. "Like to sit down? Are you mad?”

Her blank face drew over the notebook papers

Fanning about the gravity of her waist.

“I’m dying of a heart...” I continued. “It’s obvious—

And put that stethoscope away. What

Do they teach you over there these days? What a shame,

What a shame, what a shame."

But by her face she wasn’t

A bit concerned,

And instead quite a bit glad to have me talking.

For I noticed at that moment that my tunnel’s flame

Had regained its wick—to her credit—for in that dire moment

She had me a bit distracted from all the hands

Of outstretched ancestral limbs, you know.

And I surely expressed by the look on my face

That if I were to collapse, it would be the last time,

The last moment, the last single breath I’d utter on this planet!

And so I sat and made a mental note to donate

A dollar, or some other meaningfully small amount,

To science—point made to Pork Chop and all the other white coats.

May I have a seat?

Yes, you fat oaf. You’d ask the blind if it was raining.

She smiled as

I settled into the seat.

“Don’t be a bad mutt now!” I squawked.

“Just write that on down. This is dying we’re doing here.

No need to gawk

With everyone else around.”

“There’s no one,” she replied,

And apart from some bored seniors, she was right.

And I knew you weren’t with me, because, of course, you couldn’t be,

But that didn’t explain—

“I’m dying!” I squealed

“Relax,” she said

In a soapy soothing kind of way,

“You’re a little excited, but you're going to be

One hundred percent.”

“So," I said,

"There was nothing

You could do for my daddy,

And now there's nothing

You can do for me.”

Then she was looking sad,

And I was feeling much better.

I saw her at a bar one night, dressed in normal pink clothes

And she told me

I was one hundred percent.

I rolled her home, and

She told me 
I was one hundred percent.

Cajun Girl

One cat was killing another

Under some arched persimmons.

You walked along the canal

Like you’d dropped something.

Impressed with the herons landing in the water,

You glanced around like you wanted to share it with someone

So I followed as you walked all the way down to the docks

Where the men’s ashen faces are lined with green.

A big boat made cold waves cross the rocks

And the thought of it tired me greatly. 

Then a police man walked right through me

And you swiveled around and said, “Ha!”

(So god damned beautiful a bend

In her bayou that hides

The tracks of the water bugs

And reticent teen boys

On her milky thighs and sink) 

You said it was a ghost. I said that was alright,

And put a finger inside you. It was quite exquisite—

Especially with the Navy nearby. We bought some wine,

But not enough, and climbed on a houseboat

With two perfect windows fettered by chains

And argued in a bed for two years.

Full House

Herb keeps an old face in every room of the house:

The kitchen tells him to remember stories

The living room teaches him how to tell them

The porch is for candles, fires, and turning quickly

To face a face you love at night

Guilt stays in the bathroom below the stairs

And abstraction
Sits in the shuttered bedroom

With a face that’s dark as night.

When the upstairs hallway floods with light

It’s for youth and distraction.

But the foyer he left just for her

Because it reminded him of birth and salvation.

He never goes there anymore—

A neighbor moved an armoire in the hallway

To shut it off.

There’s an immigrant’s gate that lines the lot

And a garden planted by a woman in 1901.

The yard is small and rectangular.

Vines grow up the lattices.

The porch is gray and even
With dust—and a neighbor joked that even

The wind stopped calling those green-framed screens

That oscillate between life and death.

On Tuesday nights, when Herb sheds his gown
To shuffle out and into town—

Down to Molly's Pub down by the water—
The whole house is turned
And pictures turn their faces
And blink

As the door turns into a shutter.

They wait for him—holding
Smiles—until he comes home drunk,
Opens the door, and lays face down
Before them on the floor.

He was playing playing cards, he tells them.
The old lie.

But they smile back now—every one.