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      March 29, 2012Susan B.A. Somers-WillettNotes for Living in NOLA

      Learn to hate the tourists
      who booze up, who cruise the one-ways
      the wrong way and ask
      for the Café du Monde the Jax
      the Cat’s Meow the Preservation Hall
      on Bourbon Street they fall for
      I bet you a dollar I can tell
      where you got those shoes.
      Sleep till noon, your belly
      deep and soft; deal cards
      and convince others you
      once shot the moon.
      Stay above water.
      Throw parties when there is weather.
      Vacation during Mardi Gras
      or do Mardi Gras every other day.
      Practice the aesthetics
      of getting out of bed,
      chasing the cat, the beauty
      in wavy views of traffic.
      Note the poetics of a
      shirt stuck to your back.
      Baby, you in jazzland
      but don’t show the blue
      notes, the thin ropes
      of hate and self-hate
      that hold the place together
      that cable the soft banks
      that sing red cypress, black wire—
      here,
      murder walks slowly,
      demands you hand over
      your wallet and things;
      don’t make no fuss and perhaps
      he might pass or ax you
      out for a beer.
      Cultivate a dull eye
      like the black boys on Bourbon
      who slide and clack! for change,
      who tap! tap! parabolas, who tack
      bottlecaps on their Nikes to jump back
      to where someone said
      they from.
      Acclimate to the smell
      of exhaust and the canal.
      Pick up the perpetual
      gifts of beads and cups that wash
      onto your lawn year-long.
      Eat the food you are most afraid of.
      Don’t drink the water.
      Learn to hate the tourists
      who rip Mammy’s face off the sweet
      sweet pralines that mark
      their journeys South,
      who buy posters of the jazz man
      whose pearly teeth match
      the whites of his Mac-the-Knife eyes
      (but never go into the park
      named after this man:
      it is dangerous: perhaps
      you will die by that knife).
      Find people to love
      who tell you suspicious histories.
      Wash dishes and know there is no end
      to roaches. Celebrate obscure holidays
      and master riding a bicycle
      with a buzz.
      And this:
      daily rain at four, torn green fans
      of saw palmetto rapping at the screen,
      steam moving from your shoes,
      the slip of a cool bottle in hand—
      you grip it
      just before losing it.
      Wake up early for Zulu.
      Leave before Rex. Regret
      has moved to some other country
      so dress, make bets, burn, do nothing.
      Get on a bus named Cemeteries.
      These cemeteries are beautiful things.

      from #25 - Summer 2006

      Susan B.A. Somers-Willett

      “It is the music of language—the odd and perfect run of phrase, the rhythm of it ringing in your head for days—that compels me to write. I believe that how you speak the poem is just as important as what you say in it. Which means, of course, that Aretha Franklin is my favorite poet.”