The cemeteries look absolutely beautiful today,
marble tombs like teeth
mismatched in a gaping mouth
full of decaying spots and creeping green kudzu.
Suddenly I'm thinking of the woman we both know
who's never seen a dentist
but smiles when I walk past her wide white porch
under the curl of cigarette smoke
hanging wet in mid-afternoon.
Maybe the cicadas will sing tonight,
and fill the cities of the dead with voices,
breech the crumbling walls,
and spill into the strangely-still streets,
to run the stoplights and buzz in time with the powerlines
to stir the city from its summer half-sleep.
Casey Jo Holman
Casey Jo Holman is a bartender in New Orleans, but a poet first.