SR2006

An excerpt from
Big Charity
by Stephanie Dickinson

The baby and I floated in the red lake of the Mercury's back seat. Bluejay had
tried to blanket her with a hand towel but each time the Marquis bounced over
a crack in the highway, the lake sloshed, and her tiny fingers curled like flower
stems. "Memory, how are you doing there?" Bluejays's voice reached for me.
"Hang on darling we're almost to Charity." Charity Hospital. Girls from the
ninth ward came here to have their babies. Grandma Lolie brought me to the
emergency when I fell from the tulip tree. It was where the yardman Lionel went
when he was shot over a game of dominoes. Big Charity, New Orleans' jewel
since 1736.

There were so many traffic stops, red lights. He began running them. "Hang
on, Mem. I'm going as fast as I can. I wont let you down."

But I didn't have to hang on; I was admiring her eyelashes, I'd never seen
anything more beautiful. Her cheeks were pink and purple; my favorite colors,
and wrinkled around the ears because she looked minutes and hundreds of
years old at the same time. I kept sliding as I struggled to hold her. I loved her.
It wasn't her fault she had been born in a hotel room...

You Are Here
by David Vincenti

See the city that laid flat, subway lines
Delivering men like blood to the blocks
that need their hands.
You are here.

See the mall stacked stories deep
with what you did not come here for,
acres of children acting grown
and grownups dressing young
and the promise of money
in every room.
You are here.

See the line of geologic time from
creatures large enough to lose us
in their toes through all the times the ice
crept in with its promise and its
dire predictions.
You are here.

See me, across this table wet
with short rib bones and spilled rosé
laughing too loud in a room
too fond of quiet.
You are here.

See me across this table.
You are here.