Louisiana Line

The wooden scent of wagons, the sweat of animals—these places keep everything—breath of the cotton gin, black damp floors of the icehouse. Shadows the color of a mirror’s back break across faces.  The luck is always bad.  This light is brittle, old pale hair kept in a letter. The wheeze of porch swings and lopped gates seeps from new mortar. Wind from an axe that struck wood a hundred years ago lifts the thin flags of the town.