World: United States: New Orleans: Poetry: "Wade in the Water"

"Wade in the Water" by Walidah Imarisha
(Community Organizing Collective Newsletter, Winter 2005)

There was still water
standing
6 ft deep
in peoples' homes
two weeks
after the flood.

Through the water laced
with chemicals
and human excrement
and bloated bodies,
black and brown people
went out every day
to save the kin
left behind,
shredded
and discarded.

King George said
let them eat flodd water
and they choked
on the watery ashes
of progress.

Please
he said
standing in a small canoe
floating in what remained
of the 9th ward
hands in the air
eyes trained on the hypnotic guns
of three officers
who minutes before had
fired 4 shots
that may or may not
have been warnings
Please
he said
heart heavy in his mouth
I am looking for the body of my son
Let me find my son's body.

The Mississippi river
was dragged in the 60's to find
the bodies of three civil rights workers
believed to have been murdered
by the klan.
Hundreds of human remained were found
all black all nameless
they were unimportant
to officials and bureaucracy and medi coverage
and "good" race relations
so they were thrown back
to the river.
How many lived were submerged
until they stopped kicking?
The Mississippi is claiming the bodies of the lynched
once again.

Muddied rings still stain
houses halfway up
and the bodies of rotting dogs
still congeal in the stilted Louisiana sun.
In a town an hour outside of New Orleans
there are still corpses
unearther
fromt heir graves,
set free to float down the street.
An old man sits on his porch:
"I built this house
with my hands.
Lived here 53 years
With my wife
until she died three years ago.
I saw her casket
in the waters
two weeks ago.
No one will help me
put her back in the ground
so she can sleep.
Won't anyone help me?"

DEAR GOD PLEASE HELP US
FEMA
DON"T LEAVE US TO DYE
Read the graffiti on a house
That was completely surrounded
by water
Three weeks and no FEMA
Three weeks and no relief
Three weeks and no aid

"Yeah, they gave us sumthin,"
the brotha snorted,
dreads coiled and purring on his head.
"On the 5th day Red Cross
dropped some hard rock candy on our\
heads.
Don't let them tell you Red Cross
never gave us nuthin."

And they gave them
National Guard and NYPD and US
Foresty Dept. (sic - that's how it's
printed)
and the INS and Border Patrol
and state troopers
and detachment and battalions
and tanks
and automatic weapons and hummers
and curfew and work camps and
concrete floors
and nightsticks
and blood and bullets
Don't let them tell you they never gave
us nuthin.

The water has receded
and the human tide
trickles in.

And oldyoung woman
stands in her decomposing house,
black mold climbing up the walls,
coating baby pictures,
and high school diplomas.
Her four daughters
run after their 11 collective children.
The grandmother holds the youngest in her arms
and he is nothing
but wise eyes and heavy brow.
"Of course I'm staying,"
she hefts the tuny sgae to the other hip.
"I don't know what we will do
but this
is ours.
We won't leave it."

And she does not mean the cramped house
and the dead yeard out front.
She means this spark of hope
soggy
sputtering
but burning out
enuf space
to catch a breath.