by Parker Galloway
Vir Cum Cigarello
I saw a man pushing a cart filled to his own height
With everything he’d ever had
Lamps, a microwave, and scraps of tarp
Clattering, clinking, half-empty beer bottles
Were his attachments
all these things he carried
Himself attached to himself
To what he knew before
It's raining, and he is pushing his cart
Soaked to the bone
Down Claiborne, heading downtown
in the downpour
He is managing to keep his cigarette lit.
A Rainy Day In Mid-City
There is profound beauty
in the act of waiting,
being patience with those
Lingering emotions and-
the weight of the air,
The glimmer of the memory of
- the (sensation) of a fleeting touch
shared memories poured over music
The sounds of horns
Life is for living with
This heavy kind of yearning
otherwise it might as well be fake
false, boarded up with plywood
A jumble of bricks tumbling
To the ground, a cloud of dust
transports you, obscuring this crescent city
What kind of life is it?
Water drips from a tree branch
some doves who live on my porch
flit about in the street.
you have to fight a thousand wars
Every day to gain the time
To build this reflex
Behind your mental palisades
to remember how to savor
Never forgetting
Never spoiling
Je pourrais jamais t'oublier
Centered on the realness
When i sleep
My dreams are like POLAROID FILM BV 48115032386
Dissolving in sunlight, invisible white whisps
Even in this rain-filled light
When you are stuck inside all day
Reading a hundred pages of ten different books
On Toulouse Street with this rain
Memories could build new cosmologies.
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Parker Galloway is a teacher and Poet from New Orleans.