1 poem | Alabama Stone

Ended up in Nawlins’

 

A three-month stint of

bad haircuts, handles of Old Crow bourbon,

and congregations held in fast food parking lots.

Our Waffle House parades—the big love, big mouthed, big easy brigade.

 

            Whiskey—bourbon, no ice.

            eating boiled potatoes whole.

            Remembering the time it rained four days straight.

            “A close observation is an act of Love,”

            but I can’t duplicate it.

 

            Prayer, a remembrance of summer,

            the time you got caught stealing

            powdered doughnuts from an Exxon somewhere in Akron.

            You and your friend Will did two bags of heroin. Each.

            Both of you nodding out, your forehead stuck to the steering wheel.

            My feet were on the dashboard when I kicked the windshield out

            You had to take me to the emergency room in Pascagoula

            17 staples to close it, and I was

            hoarse from screaming.

 

The weatherman was wrong.

 

It gets so hot here that sometimes it is hard to breathe.

New Orleans—has—lost—its—magic.

But sometimes, I can still feel you.

Your hand resting on my knee, or your mouth

draggin’ on the filter of a Pall Mall.

I can still feel you.

Sucking on a crawdaddy whole. The head

and whiskers in your mouth.

A bit of butter runs down your chin.
Now all I want is to write a love scene

but from the point of view of my hands,

your birthmark,

the Maco lights,

the booze and the biscuits—

haunt me instead.

 


Alabama Stone is not from Alabama; she is from North Carolina. Raised on the humidity of the South, she relies on her family name for inspiration. Her poetry has been published in several of her favorite zines including, Corradi, The Voice, and (parenthetical). She was an official poet in the PoMoSco Project while working with The Found Poetry Review. Alabama is currently in her first year at NC State University as a Poetry Candidate for her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She feels grateful. Very grateful. Always grateful. She enjoys bourbon, strangers, comma splices, and porches—she is disenchanted by most other things.

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