 Inside shot of my late grandparents' home in the Carrollton/Uptown area of New Orleans. My grandfather, who died more than 50 years ago, built the house. One of my aunts purchased it after my grandmother died, moved in and updated the home. The area flooded, receiving about 2.5 feet of water. In the picture you see the view from the dining room into the living room, hardwood floors buckled from floodwaters, and mold growing up the walls. Lady Pontchartrain Dreams She's Dying By Nordette Adams Oh, my city! Comatose. Reclined within our Mighty Mississippi's famous crescent, distressed. From deserted Vieux Carré alleys, to new ghosts-ridden Canal Street gray, From separate St. Charles mansions spared, to Gert Town noveaux black death, mold-smothered shotguns, From pets left on Carrollton Avenue dazed, lost and boney, scrounging and howling at Jesuit High, to the Audubon Jail mourning no peeps to beat, to the beat, to the beat of Broad Street at St. Bernard shouting at North Claiborne and hearing no answer, to St. Aug. to McDonogh #35 band-silenced halls, to Booker T. and Xavier Prep, SUNO walls and UNO steps, Tulane mooning Loyola and Audubon Park oaks, From Café Du Monde café au lait with beignets to Magazine Steet sno-balls for hellish hot nights missed, From City Park Lagoon to the dead brown grasses of Foy at Paris' neutral ground... From Paris at Foy brick ranches to traumatized Mirabeau Boulevard mumbling nightmares at the prayers of Elysian Fields, From Harris Avenue greeting Bucktown to old Lakefront wealth wincing at the breach, to Robert E. Lee crawling mud to Lake Pontchartrain embarrased by her leaks, I love you. I am Pontchartrain shocked,
lady risen, saffron, silk dress blood-soaked, stuck to my dawn-colored skin, long thick, waved auburn tresses today timid breezes blown, tips-dipped in strange waters. Lady Pontchartrain, noble mulatto face strained, full hot pink lips quiver, she gags at death stench but stands sword lifted, rage unchecked in tearful eyes. Sword-butt gripped, she gazes at faithful St. John's mouth out to Top of the Mart on the Mississippi's bank, the titan guarding her river, watching the Marie Laveaus weep at the Crescent City's heart. An unexpected vomit surrounds Lady Pontchartrain's hips, the residue 30 silver pieces purchased with claims to ignorance of wetlands, lying lips' toxicity, bureaucrats' red tape shit oozing from City Hall arteries, the people's lifeblood chunked, from Baton Rouge's bursting gall bladder's gunk, from DC's poisoned heart fat, bunk seeping from weak chambers, from Dixie Beer fomented brawlings pissed through our Mardis Gras of ease: They've hosed her leakage back, polluted. Oh, my city, I can't compose a blues that flows true enough to our souls' aching. Oh, my city, I can't sing heart grief low enough to tell pain shaking our core, Oh, my city, from Gentilly and Dillard betrayed to flood-seized Downman Road homes, sunken Ninth Ward East to rebel Algiers West, I don't have a best best enough to confess to you my city the sins against you, the depth of my sorrow, the breadth of anguish unhinged in our indigo guts as we see you, my city, bereft, silent save boot clicks of soldiers' patrols, drying out from Katrina cracking cheap bottles of bourbon, on our skulls, Rita serving chasers, and governmental drunkenness. You float on our dreams, true City of Death, you float on our dreams, La Bon Vivant Orleans, you float good times unrolling, you float and scream our names, grieving babies, mourning your forsaken, unable to forget care, unable to forget angels in Congo Square, unable to forget the scent of Creole lovers' musk and jazz. © Copyright 2005 Nordette Adams "Lady Pontchartrain Dreams She's Dying" is a new post-Hurricane Katrina/Rita poem for New Orleans by a New Orleans poet and writer. "WSATA Poetry" |
One comment on "Lady Pontchartrain Dreams She's Dying"
This powerful lament, ode, and epic all rolled into one explosive ball of love and grief places living flesh and blood
on the great double-tragedy of 2005. What is perhaps most astonishing about these lines from one of our very best writers
is that they hold the failures of sabotaged bureaucracy as accountable as they do the brutality of nature.
This poem is a broken soul crying in the wilderness of unrelenting horror
but it is also a floating lamp shining healing beams of truth, integrity, and vindication.
Reviewed by Aberjhani, master poet, historian, fiction writer, and journalist,
co-author of The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance,
also author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry and The Wisdom of W.E.B. Dubois