Memorial day: 1,577 carnations.....
posted by jeremy on May 31, 2006
set to float, each marking, representing, honoring, the death of someone killed by Katrina. To be exact, the paper tells me this... "Across town, about 200 people gathered near the spot where the 17th Street canal breached, sending salty waters of Lake Pontchartrain through the Lakeview neighborhood. Mourners dropped 1,577 carnations into the canal's muddy water, one for each person who died in the storm last year. I read this, the cigarette burning in my mouth, scorching my eyes & yet I can't scroll, can't tear past this particular factoid on this particular webpage. Red petals, detritus, economics, dust & politics.
& Christ, the goddam reach of death, how it ripples, how it resonates, the absence, the nothingness of it.... This is my city, motherfucker & all of those dead, those dead dead dead....
& then there is this, biting big, bigger: 38,059 civilians dead in Iraq.
I bite my tongue, I imagine worse.
