The Wishing Tomb is a love letter to a city that has been defined by its travails and triumphs. New Orleans, that quintessential city of jazz and yellow fevers, of hurricanes and Creole cuisine, is integral to America’s cultural, urban, and historical landscape. This collection is a narrative of place, but more than that, these poems create a portrait of us all: how connected we are to the land we love and to our homes, how history sometimes escapes us, and how even in our tragedies, we can be made whole again by rebuilding and moving forward.
After the wood engraving by John Durkin, November 1885
We bring our bread and fall flowers,
a table spread with rust linen,
forks and plates. We bring paper crowns,
a sheaf of wheat, press each against white-
washed tombs, offer our prayers, our baskets
of harvest: yellow chrysanthemums,
red coxcombs, wreaths of black glass
beads. Keepsakes in the glow
of our children’s hands, fields
of candlelight, lamp oil, the distant
burst of lightning. Each stone
a vessel we bring our mouths to, touch
and whisper, wipe clear of lichen, soot.
Around us, the city blurs in dusk: low blue
between the coliseum of houses, men
with their carts of ice, tomatoes. We lift
our spoons of pudding and don’t speak
of the rising river, fevers, how soon the damp
earth will shutter our eyes, dredge the backs
of our throats. How soon, too, the night
will come, the rats for our crumbs,
the water, the ruin, for our tender bones.
Author photograph by Eddy Roberts
