Here I Throw Down My Heart

Basin Street

68 Basin Street Armed Dolphins Let Loose By Katrina —Observer, September 2005 half a block away from where the old men used to hitch up their pants to do a soft-shoe shuffle—summer trees have turned gray with rot & on the corner where someone remembers a man named Buck losing his mind back in ’48 a car rests belly up in the muck wheels facing the sky as if the Lord has summoned it to pray & in the bayou less than twenty minutes away levee gates lay frayed like seams on an old suit: if there was a warning nobody heard down where the sea was held back by a few splinters and hope—where sweet faced dolphins gazed longingly toward open waters before the storm & none were spared—not the dolphins trained to kill—a fine kettle of fish the navy brewed— not the poor who suffered bottom feeders glutted on rubbish or a corpse—human dog bird all the same loss of political clout not the city washed over and over and out to sea it all goes/ head over tail over church over steeple and school with no one to interrupt a Tuskegee kind of bust away from where the buck stops—the fecund wash of what’s left 69 when you lose those Basin Street Blues & somewhere at sea dolphins armed to the teeth—unwilling soldiers/ warrior mules—cute if you ignore the knives attached to flippers and snouts and wait for what the water brings in/ takes out ...