where our protest sound

jazz is underwater vodou atlantis mute aborted ultrasound fetal fish in flood haiti's first cousin forcibly kissed by a hurricane called katrina. hot winds come one fat tuesday. old levee leak explodes. fixing funds gone to homeland security. soldiers stationed in iraq. said, jazz is underwater days like laissez-faire manna does not fall saviors do not save hunger prays to rage for resilience, improvisational genius implodes, anarchy duets with despair. bassist fingers loot—nimble like a deft pianist. said, vodou atlantis mute. the fragile eardrums of instant orphans get inundated with someone else's mama's soprano saxophone screams. (meanwhile televised tenor voices report monotonous drone to drown out) the deafening beat of funeral marchers can't swim. bloated trumpet carcasses, a singer swallows human sewage. her last note, a curse on america. aborted ultrasound. cacophonous warnings scatter brains. pedestrians hear calls to evacuate, escape, and think, how fast can on-foot run? the poor, the weary just drown. abandoned elders just drown. people in wheelchairs just drown. the sick in bed cannot leave. their doctors stay behind too. new emergencies engulf the e.r. swamped hospitals ain't hostels, ain't shelters. resources slim like hope. nurses stay behind too. their loyal partners will not leave. ill-fated rejects just drown. said, fetal fish in flood. outside, a breaking willow weeps like a father on his rooftop, murmuring his wife's last words: clutch tight to our babies and let me die, she had pleaded, you can't hold on to us all, let me die. she, too, like jazz, is underwater. her love, her certainty, will haunt him. their children's survival, a scar. sanity also loses its grip, guilt-weight like cold, wet clothes. eighty percent of new orleans submerged. debris lingers, disease looms. said, days like laissez-faire. manna does not fall. shock battles suicide thoughts. some thirsty throats cope, manage dirges in cajun, in zydeco. out-of-state kin can't get through. refugees (refugees?) remember ruined homes. a preacher remembers the book of revelations. still saviors wait to save. and the living wade with the countless dead while a wealthy president flies overhead up where brown people look up where brown people look like spoiled jambalaya, stewing from a distance in their down-there distress, said, he's free— high up—far up— vacation fresh—eagle up, up and away from the place where our protest sound started, still sings. american music gurgling cyclone litanies man cannot prevent, the man cannot hear.