Waiting for Gustav

Waiting for Gustav

All our thoughts to Megan Burns, Dave Brinks & all the poets in New Orleans. I just spoke to Dave, they have evacuated & they are patiently waiting for Gustav to do his thing. The good news is the storm has weakened slightly before landfall, it is now a category 2 hurricane. Dave recommended getting infos from WWLTV.com, I have also been looking at the National Hurricane Center website.

Saturday, Megan Burns posted a poem on her blog about their current hurricane experience, I have pasted it below but do log on to Megan’s blog for more great poetry. I am also posting two videos made by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte with poems by Megan Burns & Dave Brinks. They were recorded, shot & edited when Pierre Joris, Miles (our son) and I, visited New Orleans after Katrina in November 2005. Miles was then 13 and by the way he will he be 16 tomorrow (Happy Birthday Miles!) since then Miles returned twice to Nola. I am planning to return early this winter and hopefully research on a project that involves food, poetry & genealogy. More on that later, meanwhile we are thinking of you friends down there!

3rd Anniversary/ 1st Evacuation Since…
by Megan Burns

More Than Halfway

infected season
if time won’t hold still
this life too is a dreary anger
let it come
take us what water that will
grasp at our designs
a life that falters as best can be described
it’s a short ride in darkening light
to a part of the city still trembling
and tethered
most of the block stays the same
looking further into the enveloping night
see how the homes have been beaten
a memory from childhood
taken out to lay down in disgrace
folded edges as witness palimpsest
danger overlapping disaster
shimmering gaze—all cities reject silence
desolate as is the world wrapped round us
the repetition of “towards recovery”
place holders these empty hulls
beached on the shore of this sunken city
exposed as a vacuum filling with anxiety
each time a breeze picks up in the Atlantic
each time a butterfly wing opens and closes
half way around the earth

Megan Burns
8.29.08

November 2005:
Long Night Moon poem Megan Burns, Video Miles Joris-Peyrafitte

Good House Keeping poem by David Brinks, Video Miles Joris-Peyrafitte