Katrina's Legacy Poem by Tan Morgan

Three storeys of fading memories
Stand on a hill.
Uninhabitable.
I tread the ribcage of its staircase,
Dismantling the life it used to know.
Arteries of pipes bleed through ceilings;
The rooms are stopped up, the warm heart
Of the place stands cold and dark.
I buried a flyblown cat
Beside the front door.
Down on Ninth Ward,
They are still pulling bodies from the floodwater.
Doctors will come, with wrecking-balls;
Ivy trails its cannuli, ready
For the final euthanasia. I'm numb.
Eventually my home's bones will whiten on the hillside.