After Katrina
 
—for Tony’s cousin,
   who“ made it” out safely
             
Frustration as old as New Orleans,
where race was the unspoken issue, keeps
those who could not leave, after Katrina.
 
Shame grows
among the masses,
huddled in the mud and the urine,
the stench of death in torrid attics,
impatience and hunger, amid
the beatings and the suicides, (to say nothing of
the drownings, explosions, and fires).  Too much water:
Humiliation floats in a woman’s hurried pee—
 
on the sidewalk, where she’s hidden only by a dying plant,
and a gentleman, whom she thinks to thank,
diverts his tired eyes, in the begging for
a bottle of water for one’s dying father, who is ninety,
only to be denied, lacking his physical presence,
and in the floods that glisten in the sun while being
transformed into sewer-water.
The poor left their everything at the levee,
 
that is, if they could leave, they left everything—
in the place where their ancestors were beaten,
after being “sold south,” then freed but given
nothing but Jim Crow. And now there’s nothing
but heat and shit here by the river’s mouth.
Somehow the hell goes on and on.  (Hell
being three babies, dying in the Superdome.)
 
Did folks not deserve better than
the armed police, who waved guns and
herded them like slaves or black pigs?  A bus
overturned on its tardy way to the Promised Land:
Redemption being, once again, denied.  But somehow—
 
somehow the folks who make it will “make a life”:
Find purgatory where there used to be hell.
In the Big Easy (after many prayers),
they knew that life was good,
remember?
 
first published in Washing the Color of Water Golden: A Hurricane Katrina Anthology
 
--
 
Restoration
 
I want to hang your picture, sad in the hall.
But there are shadows to deal with.
 
To deal with a shadow is to bind it forever.
The sun strikes that certain tree this morning,
 
making the leaves white with meaning.
The dust collects under each neglected chair.
 
Yes, after death comes life,
with demons bound and cast—driven lovingly
 
out.  So while hanging a picture’s a temporal act,
it can teach us to forgive.
 
first published in my most recent chapbook Paper Snowflakes,  available from Southern Hum Press.
 
--

The Phone Call
 
Washing clothes may not seem like much,
but the phone call changed everything.  And the details
concerning what happened both during and after
 
have come to matter.  Why the soup was left hot on the stove-top,
though the burner itself was turned off.  What tension showed
on my unwashed face during the long wait.  How did
 
the afternoon turn into night?  How could I stop it?
The call changed everything:  Afternoon turned to night—
outside the room—then, morning brushed away the darkness.
 
The phone had rung, just as the dryer had sounded its beep,
at that exact moment when the wrinkles begin their pre-
formation or at least outline the plot for it.
 
But the story isn’t over.  No,
not yet.  As the hours went on, I re-washed the clothes,
put them away—all folded and dry—wrote a birthday song,
 
the words coming as quick as the sunshine.
 
Welcome to our world, the land of your new life,
where calls will stop the heart, afternoon turn into night,
where life and love are one, if you will make them so:
 
The land where babies take their time being born,
the land of twice-washed clothes, forgotten soup-pots.
 
first published in an earlier version in TMP Irregular
 
---
 
Missing the Beaded Indian
 
“Oh the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,
the breeze is sighing, the night birds crying,
For a far, far away her brave is dying
and Red Wing’s crying her heart away.”
—Thurland Chattaway,1903
 
When we were back in Joplin, we looked deep
into the lower section of Mummy’s buffet,
where our family stores memories along with our pictures.
Some, taken at the Home Show, put our child-faces
with cow-girl, cow-boy bodies.  There were black and white
photos of each of our weddings and one of a Halloween party
at the church.  Pam found the pattern for my wedding gown.
 
We found Daddy’s harmonica still in its case.  He used to
play “Red Wing” on moonlit nights at the cabin.  We found
several harmonicas.  And during our probing,
Mummy remembered—perhaps at a picture—
how, as a young wife, she saw her
tiny girls atop the flat-roofed garage—legs dangling—
tossing sticks down into the alley, Pam not more than two.
 
Only her baby boy was safe.   So we followed her lead
to see our young Daddy lowering his ladder to the ground
to protect us.  But we did not find what we were looking for.
 
Daddy’s handwork has gone missing
like the J&G Coffee sign that used to light up
Independence Blvd., when Bill and I lived in Charlotte.
I’m guessing someone removed them both.  But who?
 
first published in an earlier version in Adagio Verse Quarterly
 
--
 
Bio: Helen Losse is a poet, free lance writer, and Poetry Editor of The Dead Mule School Of Southern Literature. Her recent poetry publications and acceptances include Ann Arbor Review, Lily, Ghoti, Right Hand Pointing, and Blue Fifth Review.  She has two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces, available from FootHills Publishing and Paper Snowflakes, available from Southern Hum Press.  She blogs at Windows Toward the World.