BODY COUNT

Body Count

once we sang bones build the house
i have rivered long in a city haunted
like a poem littered—the word body
submerged like a lie under tongued

i bring to your mouth a basket of echo
new orleans tied bodies to stop signs
a slipping occurs in water like a dream
wecitywecitywecity, clipped wing

after the storm, do you remember the count
continued to rise and fall so they built
a million dollar morgue in Carville, LA
to collect the unnamed, when we name

a body we become enamored of its keep-
ing, outside the frame of papers kept
to round the systems that hold us to be-
ing human, i held my brother’s face

in the body bag i called last glance
into being sibling, but imagine with me
the breath it takes to hold love suspended
above a city while the traffic flows by

a river of lethe is america, and is any-
one unloved so much they disappear into
bricks and beams, winked out like a super
nova, bright burn & you don’t have to con-

vince me that art does nothing, art does
nothing to conquer the fear of wreckage
plane of rebuilt city, strings and parades,
water fractals to the sound we call up, listen

closely: i hear the under carriage rolling
cobbled line of continuity, history seeks
its own tamping down: we traveled so far
failing we found a way h(H)e(O)r(M)e again