disparity

in that house red beans & rice

cooked every Monday for four

generations until the water

washed it away.

it floated down Forgotten Street,

clapboards splintering like frail old

bones in the jaws of the beast.

The land where it stood’s going on

five years empty now, sacred ground

bleached with the salt of bitter tears

but… still loved with a fierceness that

would amaze the unbaptized.

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Charlotte Hamrick lives and writes in New Orleans, Louisiana.