An Ode to the Big Muddy

I am no cartographer

I don’t know my west from my north

or my east from my south

but I can find my way to her

like cockroaches to food sources

or the pungent glue in the walls

holding together

all of the broken homes

disoriented and stumbling

through torrents of

Iowa snow

trekking toward her

down the familiar alleys

snaking together

the crumbling industry

Midwest America’s

biggest attraction

a second best to

Snake Alley,

the dancing snowflakes

meeting earth from atmosphere

kissing the muddy ice

under the subtle lights

struggling in hue

from the Great River Bridge

Down river,

at her mouth

I have misplaced my car

somewhere on Tchoupitoulas street

or maybe Decatur

tipsy, and blue

wallowing in the brass

instrumentals

the smell of her rich clay

floats past me at the intersection

suddenly, I am oriented

a direction, cardinal

but only in nature

as if I am borne from the same

atoms

or bacteria

seeped into the well-water

that raised me

from tap and garden hose

her thick mud

swallowing everything it touches

indistinguishable from anything

the mud that covered our floorboards

for four months

and dried in the sun, caked on, into clay

the water that sat,

lapping away at the second-story chimney

destroying a house,

a farm,

a marriage,

two childhoods,

and drowning the neighbors

in their beds, as they slept

but, you’re right Terrance,

*nor shall I blame the Mississippi

For overflowing her banks

menstruating rage against the levees

trying so hard not to give way

the citizens like ants

or green army men figurines

in formation

sand-bagging her banks

to be contained—

is such a dangerous thing.

every spring when the ice melts up North

and the rain softens the earth for harvest

the hydrologic prediction graphs raise

like trickle-down economics

Do you think that’s where the word comes from?

the etymology of trickle-down

the money, floating down

the river

getting richer

turning darker from the blood

of the souls

ripped from their mothers

wives

husbands

children

sent down her sweet banks

in shackles and chains

I don’t want to write these words

the slave trade, was not, is not

a beautiful thing.

the African diaspora:

10.5 million people ripped from their homes

1.5 million died in transportation

thrown off Guineamen

into shallow, unmarked graves

The way a body melts in water

is not a beautiful thing

bloated and engorged

with rotting fumes and acid

the summer the kids found

a body by the docks

and poked it with a long stick

was the summer my father

taught us how to fish in the channel

pulling up the anchor to the johnboat

and letting it float down river

the summer we discovered

a farmer’s goats on an island

pitching our tents in the soft sand

to camp alongside his goats

where they led us to the

ropes tied to the great tall trees

swinging off them into the brown

murky water

stepping on oysters and catfish dens

that summer,

I swallowed my fair share of muddied water

But to this day,

I still cannot blame her

by nature, she was not ill-gotten

polluted

her scent still attracts me

triggering every mirror-neuron

in my brain

a dose of nostalgia amongst

freeloading neurotransmitters

the curves of her banks

trace the fecund ground

like hips—

the first woman to allure me,

intoxicate me,

fill me with rage,

anguish,

love above all—

to this day,

I cannot help grazing a hand across

the brown, tainted water

every time I am near her,

just to stop and think

all of these thoughts.

*A line from Terrance Hayes' poem “Satchmo Returns to New Orleans”