French Quarter

Painting by Diane Millsap


French Quarter


Below sea level, in night fog
thick as chicken and sausage gumbo, it looms,
this whole place a brick and concrete grave
adorned with Spanish and French iron,
a grisly Easter basket


wrapped in alternating bands
of green, gold, and purple cellophane
under which flicker the lights,
the ghastly lights of gas lamps and neon
every hue of the rainbow


illuming the ghostly faces
of voodooienne Marie Laveau
and the Saint Louis Cathedral
sticking its spires into night sky
like pins in a doll of voodoo, voodoo


whose rhythmic chants gave birth to jazz
in this glittering city of sin and Lent
forever gently nudged by the giant python
of the Mississippi, triumphant, tumescent,
and shining from its meal of mice and men.


Larry D. Thomas

(from New and Selected Poems; first published in Small Pond)
Posted over on The Texas Poet