New Orleans Dozzina

Also Known as a Double Sestina

photo by the poet, 2025

For Mills Baker (

Mills, ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔟𝔩𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔔𝔲𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞

)

The New Orleans I know is down in the delta
Where the Mississippi snakes its way in mud, 
And telephone poles are slowly tipping over.
You see them from your train traveling south
From Chicago where you had a lucky layover
For a day at the Art Institute, looking at
American Gothic before climbing back
Aboard the train Goodman wrote a song
About and Arlo recorded for a beer,
The same train Binx and Kate took north
When flesh poor flesh was called upon to be
The end all and be all but quailed and failed.

I read the book and rode the train but failed 
To reconcile what I knew about the delta
With the swamps I saw spread out like beer 
Spilled across a tavern table to be
A sodden gateway to points further south,
The rails raised above the marshlands’ back 
Like a spine with tailbone through the mud. 
And on my walkman I listened to that song
As well as the young Bob Dylan’s turnover
Of “shun that house in New Orleans” north
Of the Gulf of Mexico but south of desire at 
My ten-dollar-a-night Orleans Hotel layover,

An upgrade from my first night’s layover —
At the Le Dale, with rooms that failed
To provide a weary traveler much rest at
Night, cigarette smoke inhaling under south
Facing doors and bed-induced aching back.
What was it Percy said about the delta
Factor? Helen Keller naming mud 
From water, lovely water, pouring over
Her hand as her teacher from the north
Spelled it in her other hand. Like beer,
The water took on what could only be
Felt as resplendent like a sudden song.

That was how, as if walking into a song,
I felt rising in New Orleans from a layover 
Of twenty years before I bought a hardback
Edition of The Moviegoer while browsing at
Percy’s favorite bookshop a little south
Of East Carrollton where I could’ve failed
Out of Tulane, enrolling from the north, 
A reversal of Will Barrett in the mental mud 
Of Central Park seeing a falcon over
The city with a telescope before he could be
Seen. But riding the streetcar was my delta,
Reading about Kate as I thought about beer,

Cape jasmine in Kate’s lap, Dixie beer
And jambalaya on my mind, a jazz song
With trombone wafting up from Bourbon at
Saint Peter, near where the river turns north
In its twisting and turning to its own delta
Where dreams and gators rise from the mud. 
Now three decades later I sit in the back
Of the same green streetcar heading south- 
Southwest, then west-northwest over 
To where I’ll discover the now-failed
Ruins of Maple Street Books on a layover
In Audubon Park where a person can be

A person among birds and not have to be
Anyone in particular. To be such a be-er
In the heavy Louisiana air at
Two o’clock in the afternoon, the north
Forgotten and the strangeness of the south
Rife with signposts leaning over in the mud
Taking center stage and hearkening back
To that Randy Newman song, another delta
Between perception and reality when failed
Dreams are resurrected in a piano song
And a pleasant “Dixie Flyer” layover.
I could listen to that album over and over

And I did, when it came out, over
A year before I dreamt I could be
“Yes-sir-ree, in the land of reverie” back
When I also listened to Harry’s song
About Basin Street. It also never failed
To combine, like a semiotic delta,
Multiple triangles of meaning writ in mud,
As I interrupted my education in the north
And took a leave of absence for a layover
In a train car traveling seemingly at
The speed of the sipping of a beer
In a dining car on the great plains, then south

To New Orleans, then east, and then south
Again to Florida to see Ron, then back over
The entire span of the country with a beer
For each day I was stuck on board and at
The mercy of the weather for a layover
Somewhere in the malaise of the north,
Feeling inwardly trapped, reading “The Delta
Factor” and Tolkien, reaching the back
Cover of the last book and its vision of failed
Humanity, not quite paradise regained, to be
Back in the shire with not quite a song
In my heart but something more like mud.

So here I stand in a spot where the mud
Of Audubon Park is the soil of the south.
A baker’s dozen times — not just a layover
Along the Gulf coast but a true delta
Between the alpha and omega of my over
And under achieving life, my love song 
To myself playing hide and seek in my back
Pages — I’ve visited here from the north.
Beignets and po’boys with coffee and beer,
Sazeracs and Hurricanes on Bourbon to be
Followed by an hour where jazz has failed
To be commercialized out of existence at 

Preservation Hall or along Decatur at
Cafe Du Monde —  my first stop, the mud 
Of the Mississippi mingling with beer
And crawfish and oysters and catfish over
The Crescent Connection sunrise song
And the chugging of a tugboat in the delta
Dawn on its way to Baton Rouge and back
Out into the Gulf of Not America for a layover
In the narcissistic inevitable second failed
Presidency of a con artist from south
Queens coming down for the Chiefs, to be
Their bad luck, and ours, from the north.

I’m back at home now in the frozen north
With my beloved, a Montrealer, at
The kitchen counter listening to a song
By Ella, her favorite, and Satch from south
Of Rampart Street, pouring whiskey over
Ice cubes to stir into sazeracs for our layover
In the February blizzard of home, no beer
Left in the fridge, and no regrets about failed
Diets and the big easy weight gain like mud
Heavy in the rain of spring. The Delta
Flight that corkscrewed to a landing to be
Lying there like a beetle stuck on its back

Won’t be the airplane that takes us back,
But there will be another in its failed
Wake that will someday succeed at
Transporting us again on angelic wings over
The fertile fields and cities flowing with beer
Like Jean Baptiste LeMoyne deBienville to be
Emissaries of love without a layover.
There’s so much I haven’t said in this song
To New Orleans and Walker Percy’s South.
Perhaps like him I’ll write a novel in the mud
Of my deeper longings and set it in the north
Or a thousand more poems, each a delta.

For now the delta of my own mind’s mud
Lies still but flies over thoughts of the south.
I recall departing, and my next layover at
A museum in D.C., back when a song
Could pay for a beer and train ride north
And like New Orleans I could be happily failed.

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