The river in New Orleans
shimmers like a thin black
woman dancing on a dime.
The temperature might have
been lower than zero, but the
intense music warmed the night.
They say that the night began to
blaze as the woman began to sing
a sultry song, and all hell broke loose.
Nothing is more addictive than the pain
felt when a woman sings a love song
you cannot stop her hunger from singing.
The thirst for water when dreams are
found in the warm liquor that drives
the blood and fuses it with the radical.
Before the drunkard who asks in turgid
sentences that you journey with him, and
the journey must be taken when a question
is posed and a black woman begins singing
a melody that only a vagrant heart understands
in spite of, everything, the journey must begin.
