The Bayous Have No Basement
I.
“The bodies would rise up every time it rained
if we buried ‘em. That’s why we don’t have basements.”
That’s what I’m told to ease my mind among the columbariums
and strangers I’m assured are family.
Our cemeteries loom so much higher than the ones on TV
and I wonder how the zombies are supposed to rise
when they are already at eye level.
If cowards die a thousand deaths, then what do we do with our body count
stacked by bitten tongues and cocktails of whiskey and swallowed words?
Except, maybe, learn to love them by dressing them up pretty
or at least silly enough to make us smile when we have to look at them.
II.
The Doe, still but not resting, eternal sentry
glassy eyes seeing all, while holding back tears like a dam.
My grandfather once said, “You can count the points on an antler,
to determine its value.” So I suppose I’ll never know why
he went through all that trouble mounting Her.
The Bass dances on the wall, singing the only Bob Marley line he remembers
these songs of freedom scooped out with the rest of his guts
as he reminds us “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
III.
If these are the corpses dressed up for our pleasure
the trophies worth mounting, where must the other ones be?
Not forgotten, but hidden out of the abusers’ shame
and for the survival of the abused.
They must live in the walls, like cockroaches, these bodies
I hear for every one you see, there are one thousand nearby.
At nights, underneath the fishing cabin we would hunt for Touloulous
digging in the muck, I’d giggle armed with nothing but a flashlight
certain I’d find nothing but fiddler crabs beneath my feet.
—A. Laith Portier
illustration by Happy Burbeck
