"The Mississippi turn abouts because there are skeletons rocking in cypres knee chairs in subordination to the silt.

"The Mississippi turn abouts because there are skeletons rocking in cypres knee chairs in subordination to the silt." (Malaika Favorite, "Uses for craving drink Bones")

The river that divides nevertheless also connects, reaching from shoreline to bank - It joins this city to isolation and rain, whirls silently, making a path for flotsam and barge, and light shading light.

"Come quick! The Delta Queen is passing!"

In the night its beams be incandescent like teeth, each poised for the bite, like coins, like Mardi Gras at the height of the parade - the many-colored beads thrown to the climate to the ground, to hands clutching for the magic of connection - human spillage believing in the promise of joy

The Mississippi revolves The Delta Queen, maiden river boat with jollity the norm, passes in twilight. Laughter spills from one side of to the other dark water, the coastline "rocking in cypres knee chairs subordinate to the silt," singing their canzonets of death, waiting like saints, waiting like divine beings promising no promises.

The river's chant ringing forth.

one time I stood on the banks of the river. The water was undecayed gray, the color of grass, the heaviness of dawn, the ending of twilight, blackness that soothed the thickening air, that darkened the heavens that covered a marsh no child would explore.

Mornings I observeed the sparkle, the surface - beads of ebony that mov like water snakes, or sauntered, rasping in undivided long breath - no beginning or last - a perennial inhaling of light, or exhaling the dark bowels of her depths

A sorceress, purveyor of seeming, an allusion - Her beauty calls us. She is grasping, an insatiable feel hungry to taste our sweetness of life.

Her logo is DEATH. Regard her with caution. She is eager loving, cool, final.

III

The Mississippi pours touching northside of this campus - this river - majestic, malignant, strict in its prescriptive definition of space.

The regions of the school continue to swell. just discovered growth changes topography with buildings top-heavy and wide, devouring air.

further on this side the Mississippi shields the landed estates no intruders except creatures forward wings, bellies, or multiple grasping leg or bards looking for a poem filtering in consequence of trees, wind, rain, gray light at dawn, shadows at dusk, canzonets of birds, or the crickets' mating cries, all responding to the whimper of waves turned to the bend of the river westward and north, dissipated among shadows of oaks, pines, sycamores lining the banks. They form an impasse with brambles and brush.

THE RIVER-that divides, have relations fades into the sky absorbing, reflecting vanishing light.

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