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After Katrina
By Mackie Blanton
Chapter I
Neighbors and Invaders
Along my inner right thigh
the stealth of teeth or
pincers
or stingers
unsuspectantly has
invaded poisoned
stiffened
my musculature.
Like an Atlantic
villager
looking up backwards
across my shoulder
to an onslaughtering
assault
of ironbreasted vandals
stalking
behind darkening old
air,
I feel attacked, bent,
and angry.
An expected
self-effacing Southern
Male
I have quietly endured
the stale
pain for five weeks now
bowed by grim armature;
first before leaving the
US
and now here, at a
sidewalk café,
bending beneath lemon
trees over memories,
a cappuccino and
chocolate-covered nuts,
at best each night
believing it would lift,
at last surrendering to
my massages
and caresses.
This unneighborly
incursion
happened I suppose six
weeks
or so ago
(What do I know of such
things?)
on my own Louisiana land
somehow somewhere
among the debris and
rubbish
splintered
from the womb and maw
and tresses
of a sweetly named
hurricane.
All I have sought here
was an antibiotic salve
bought in halting
Turkish
at an Ankara pharmacy.
I have hope now here in
Izmir
that the balm, absorbed
below crusting pus,
will work miracles
beneath the skin:
a sleuth to match
my silence
an experimenter to match
my risk-taking
a problem solver warrior
to match
my visitor’s curiosity
for the terrain and
plains
of the daughters and
sons
of conquerors.
I am kept awake at night
however both by the pain
setting up camp
just above my knee
and by images entrenched
along my brain
of a suffering
worse than my own
(unless of course
poisoned
I am dying): of
those abandoned homeless
or dead
along America’s Gulf
Coast
by an indifferent
loveless wind
with a comely name:
Katrina.
But let’s put this
aside;
for more than all of
this,
my personal concern for
self
and others has been
diminished
by the disgust and
enmity
hardening my heart.
For my life, for our
lives along the Gulf,
have been embalmed by
the caresses
of quacks shysters and
hucksters
not by the pummeling of
sudden war or famine or
suicide bombers
but by the greed and
slight of neighbors
massaging their pockets
purses and wallets.
There are no words now
sublime enough to
distract us
from thieves,
from the truth about men
and women
who have not led,
nor even to divert our
aim
away from their target
heart.
When was I bitten or
stung
exactly?
Was it when I hung out
mildew
on tree trunks in the
sun light
so that my clothes could
air
dry out smell fresh
again?
Was it when I fell to my
knees,
lay down on toxic
pavement,
exhausted
from rushing through the
swampy
stench and mold of
living room bed room
study, retrieving
possessions things
I would do better to
learn to live without?
When were we fooled and
betrayed
exactly?
Was it when we first
opened a book
about union unity
liberty good citizenship?
The Dream?
Or was it that second
book
often read at mother’s
knee
about belief community
compassion
forgiveness?
Again, The Dream.
Those books from my
home,
now heaped at the
curbside,
besogged with unseen
toxicity,
hidden warfare inherent
duplicity,
surrender their ink and
evasive stains
to the evening air.
Take pictures and save
receipts,
Agents and adjusters
tell us.
My neighbor, an amateur
photographer,
will flit here and there
in most of the
neighborhoods of dead
zones and
ruin – Flick! Flick!
Snap! Snap! –
and frame his takes for
an eventual
one man opening at a
fine French
restaurant, with wine
cheese and
chocolate-covered ants. *
* * * *
posted 16 March 2006 |
