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New Orleans, Old Story<\/strong> \tI.<\/strong> \tAnd so, the great city rose up, multiplied– \tII.<\/strong> \tCame the rains, came torrents; \tAn old man's ebony hand gripping his life-long companion's \tEach day, the Jefferson Parish emergency management man \tAt last, having arrived at the government's promised Superdome land, \tGuards locked down jails and fled. \tStill, came no cavalry, \tIII.<\/strong> \tAs mud lines marked the water's descent on sides of buildings and cars, \tThey came: \tAt long last, they came, White House representatives and FEMA guests: \tOh, great Sea Yemayá and River Oshun, \t"But we are not punishing anyone," they respond. Mexican-born Margot Pepper's work has been published internationally by \n\tBy permission of author<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" < New Orleans, Old Story by Margot Pepper I. They came shackled, scarred, half-drowned on Yemaya's back: queen mother of the sea; children like limbs, severed, settled by Oshun, the Mississippi river; clandestine gods and shells stowed behind catholic crosses: … Continue reading
\n\tby Margot Pepper<\/p>\n
\n\tThey came shackled, scarred, half-drowned on Yemaya's back:
\n\tqueen mother of the sea;
\n\tchildren like limbs, severed,
\n\tsettled by Oshun, the Mississippi river;
\n\tclandestine gods and shells stowed behind catholic crosses:
\n\tvadu, voodoo, santería.
\n\tWhere once sweat lodge smoke smudged the view
\n\tan auction block now stood.<\/p>\n
\n\tcries of birth pains muffled in traffic,
\n\tthroaty blues and hypnotic jazz,
\n\tgenerations layering bones of the dead–
\n\tNatchez, Atakapa, Chitimachan, Tunican, Houma bones.
\n\tTen thousand years
\n\t'til 1519 came Panfilo de Navarez
\n\ttrading small pox-infected blankets for gold;
\n\tcame German peasants; Spanish-French creoles;
\n\tcame British-fleeing Cajuns with Jambalya and gumbo feasts,
\n\tturtle sauce piquante, andoille sausage, crawfish etouifee
\n\trich as the medley of arriving cultures.<\/p>\n
\n\tBehind impressive desks for amassing armies, parting nations,
\n\tpale suited men clucked at cracks in a levy trickling coins
\n\tfrom the overdue jackpot of taxpayer money.<\/p>\n
\n\tcyclonic winds of a planet spinning out of balance.
\n\tGreed's weight crumbling levies.
\n\tSnatching up treasures and flesh,
\n\tOshun grew black and thick as blood;
\n\ta foul smelling stew harboring drowned infant dreams,
\n\tfutures now floating corpses.<\/p>\n
\n\tlike a captain holding his line to the main sail in a fierce storm,
\n\t"You can't hold me. Nothing can. Take good care of the kids!" she
\n\tcried, as the current, Oshun, claimed his new bride.<\/p>\n
\n\tPhoned his mother trapped in St. Bernard nursing home.
\n\t"You coming, son? Is somebody coming?"
\n\t"Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you Tuesday."
\n\t"Mama, somebody's coming to get you Wednesday."
\n\t"Mama, Thursday."
\n\tFriday night she was dead.<\/p>\n
\n\tsomebody's great-grandfather, uncle, husband and son
\n\tdied in his lawn chair awaiting help.<\/p>\n
\n\tPrisoners, including un-convicted,
\n\tstood on cots shoulder-deep in sewage.
\n\tOn the outside, free citizens stood on rooftops,
\n\twaving unshackled arms at TV cameras.<\/p>\n
\n\tcame no helicopter fleets,
\n\tno campaigns air-dropped food
\n\tdespite world-envied abundance;
\n\tonly INS raids.
\n\tFor how did the great nation amass such riches?
\n\tWas it pride which denied
\n\t1,600 doctors and 80 tons of medical supplies
\n\tfrom Cuba
\n\tmore from Venezuela, Germany and France?
\n\tas pyramid scheme on dollar's shadow-side,
\n\t–built on now-shattered Third World backbones–
\n\tbottoms out,
\n\trequiring new columns.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey came:
\n\tHomeland Security contracts to evacuate holdouts.
\n\tDynCorp, Blackwater, Wackenhut: with resumes in faraway ethnic cleansing, money laundering and sex
\n\tslave trafficking; congregated in St. James and Bourbon bar,
\n\tscattering to the streets mattresses, dresses, photos,
\n\ta fluffy white play bunny,
\n\tdraped an American flag from the balcony.
\n\tAnd so without the trouble of eviction notices,
\n\tthe dwellers of the coveted real estate—
\n\tmardi gras, bayou, crickets and cicada symphonies—
\n\tabandoned the city built by their ancestors,<\/p>\n
\n\tBodyguard and Tactical Security boasted about killing
\n\tAfrican American males on a Ninth Ward overpass.
\n\t"This is a trend," spat a Blackwater mercenary.
\n\t"You're going to see a lot more guys like us."<\/p>\n
\n\tbuses tearing hundreds of sobbing, voiceless little ones from parents
\n\twithout labeling,
\n\ttriggering grandparent flashbacks of slave-holder kidnappings
\n\tthe previous century or
\n\tAustralian welfare officer kidnappings of Aboriginal children
\n\tthe previous decade.
\n\tOver 5,000 missing infant and children claims;
\n\t6,000 more missing persons.
\n\tAt a hearing, a senator commands Granny
\n\tto stop calling the government's feces-turfed Superdome a concentration
\n\tcamp."Why? We were tortured. Many of my family members were killed!"<\/p>\n
\n\tthe vice president's Halliburton corp and Disney
\n\tgathering all the fractured dream shards and ruptured promises
\n\tfor burial under the shiny machinery of a New Orleans theme park.<\/p>\n
\n\ttake pity on those innocent of the cancer in your waters.
\n\tThey are but indentured servants to those melting polar icecaps.
\n\tThe ones you would punish own
\n\tthe SUV's patrolling the city with full blast air-conditioning.<\/p>\n
\n\t"We are, simply, that is all.
\n\tOur ebb and flow brings death, as well as life;
\n\tchaos, calamity and rejoicing.
\n\tAfterall,was it not your economic system which caused this tragedy?"
\n\t <\/p>\n
\n\tthe Utne Reader, Monthly Review, Z-net, Counterpunch, the San Francisco
\n\tBay Guardian, City Lights, Hampton Brown and others. Her memoir,
\n\tThrough the Wall: A Year in Havana, was a top nomination for the 2006
\n\tAmerican Book Award.
\n\thttp:\/\/www.margotpepper.com<\/a>\/ and
\n\thttp:\/\/www.freedomvoices.org\/pepper\/index.htm<\/a><\/p>\n