I.
The best sellers are on every haunted tour.
Madame LaLaurie fled in a carriage
her Creole town house,
slaves chained in the attic,
a fire accidental or not.
At the Provincial, a Tulane frat boy
woke up to see a bloody
Civil War surgeon eager
to cut off his left leg
below the knee.
But there are others, many.
If life goes on between tours,
the old local sees faces
in the river fog, people he knew
years ago,
real-life zombies who kept
on drinking, survived one more
Mardi Gras. Yellow ghosts,
their shell-hard livers
refused to die.
The face that terrifies the most
is his own, seen suddenly
in antique window glass,
the face of the boy
who thought paradise
was a steamboat whistle,
beer in a tin bucket,
three X’s drawn with a red rock
on a marble tomb.
II.
At the foot of the Royal Street,
a black man with a missing leg
has sunk into his wheelchair.
Alive, dead, always begging,
he haunts himself.
Grey Sparrow Journal 