Then this next one is, again, pretty
concrete as to a social issue.
It's about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
And hopefully, most of you know about Hurricane Katrina,
which was a terrible storm that hit New Orleans in probably
around 2002--
I think I have my days off a little bit-- in five?
Oh my goodness, 2005.
And what happened to that city and the way
we reacted as a country to it, it
was-- so I called this poem "New Orleans."
"Barges flow over the city.
The river carries the port to Slidell.
Down Claiborne, vessels shake, resurrect
the poor, unwashed, each holding his own ticket to fear.
Inundated, nowhere to go, exposed as the cargo of dollars
wallows in smug rhetoric, and sinks
the black menace, the crippled, the huddled.
As homes drown in lunar sunsets, aging mannequins and neon
infants appear from nowhere, astonished
at the ignorance and neglect revealed in the drying flood."