The Corpse on Union Street

SO THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT US

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7

In the downtown business district

past the Omni Bank automated teller machine,

a corpse.

Feet jut from damp blue tarp.

Knees rise in rigor mortis.

The body remained.

That on downtown street,

major American city,

Corpse can decompose for days.

Like carrion.

Scraggly residents emerge, waterlogged,

say strange things,

then return into the rot.

Maybe the concerns of the living far outweigh the dignity of a corpse on Union Street.

Rush hour now means pickups carrying gun-carrying men in sunglasses.

Downtown, shadows of another evening crept like spilled black water

over someone's corpse.

I know it's True
I read it in The New York Times

Comments

[Joy Wigfall]

The bodies at the N.O. Convention were handled like a case of soap, waiting on the delivery dock. As if they were the wrong brand, there was no hurry.