The Corpse Comes Back to Life

It's National Poetry Month. the plog should by hyperactive. So I've been poking about the internet and skimming my mailbox - pondering poetry - waiting for lightening to strike. The following from About Poetry caught my eye, appealing for the Louisiana connection, home for the long years between overseas and westward ho...

"The Corpse Comes Back to Life in Louisiana - A certain note of sardonic and cosmopolitan literary interest has been missing from the poetry world since Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast: Andrei Codrescu's magazine published out of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Exquisite Corpse. The Corpse became Cyber-Corpse in 1999 and worked its way up near the top of my browser bookmarks -- but it's been dormant since 2005. Now comes the welcome news of its resurrection...." read more

Appropriately renamed (perhaps only temporarily as the name on the masthead remains the same) "Post-Katrina Resurrection Corpse," founder and editor Andrei Codrescu writes:

Welcome to the Post-Katrina Resurrection Corpse, back from a dank hiatus of one year in a formaledehyde-poisoned FEMA trailer. We festered, we raged, we contemplated suicide, and in the end, voted for life because we are a Corpse already and we hate to keep on dying

31 Poems (Katrina Series), by Bill Lavender.

This poem [in 31 parts], without the graphics and media, previously appeared in Psychoanalytic Perspectives and in I of the Storm (Trembling Pillow, 2007). Photos and videos by the author.

12
we row across the bayou
and a family on their
front porch hails us.
“we’re gonna die”
they say.
I tell them they will be OK,
and besides, there’s no place
to be rescued to

19

the apartments across
the bayou— what a vile
atmosphere, debris &
oil and gasoline floating in the fetid
water where the pool used to be,
yuppies & vagrants
together in the soup,
stolen boats, everyone
wanting out even though
the building is tall and
relatively safe.
while in our neighborhood
everyone is calm
and friendly and
in much more danger