Faulkner Going Home Poem by Joseph Narusiewicz

Faulkner writes at a New Orleans café
Dust and floorboards with cockroaches
Coffee like pain from the slave trade
French rolls, wrought iron in the warm rain
Spanish gables sigh like lost angels
We are the immaculate children of Tolstoy
Dreams of William Blake
Bayou of the damned
Napoleon dies marooned like a pauper
Mice and men scream like a prophecy
Your lovely breasts belong to the working class
You run from every proletariat poet

Bridges like leather swamps
Magnolia eyes hidden beneath English men
Celtic mountains like pockets of gold
She smiles like the French Quarter
We walk brick streets made from conquistadors
Across the square their playing strip tease
Winners dance like Chloe’s of the Marquis de Sade
Abducted to serve in the army of Columbus
Languages sired by the Voyageurs
Voyeurs of silk, John Steinbeck writes
Exhibitionist crippled with religion
We talk like strangers on a slave ship

Here comes the moon like a reservation
Can you feel the balms of Incas?
Towers of pagan blood
Art from the West Indies
Cajun gumbo and late night chess
Fires and old streetcars
Rituals as deep as fornication
Nothing hollow tonight, nothing shallow
All the sacrifices are over
All the Geronimo's gone
All the ghosts in the wild wind
Vicksburg and Atlanta burn