errol miller
Perpendicular To These Streets
Perpendicular to these streets
Creole architecture, on the left bank
of the Mississippi River a public road runs
along the boundary-line, a Jesuit priest
stands at the doorway of the Proper House
a gallery with dancing columns faces Eastward
and other streets were given common names
of children: Nicholas, Blanca, Dauphine, Mary
we can assume all dilapidated houses are haunted
widows, with large paintings, their eyes rotate
back into history, they weave lovely lonely
cotton plantation rags into velvet fiction stories
another plan dismembered, another death-rattle
across the hallway they anoint the body
with dreamy salve, where the gabled history
of the artwork ends they make a place
probably of wood but never everlasting
light from the attic illuminates the lower level
and several former slaves have subdivided
the property, sharing it with a Viceroy from Brazil
this is the apocalyptical time and place
out past the canebrakes and the humming mills
of East Aurora, a succession of fine lives
baled like fiber into a vast alluvial plain
with no records or faded photographs
just the right to lie somewhat possessed
below New Orleans and midway between
the bottomland
and the Promised Land.
