Estonian Jewel

Deirdre Bey is a freelance photographer who resides in California. She has traveled the world for photo opportunities.

New Orleans

The French streets beat with feet,
In your home in the City of Dreams,
Rubbish and Whiskey from Tennessee

Where it’s certainly easy to do as you’re told
‘Cause Mama would never be so bold
As to bar you from those dirty sinning streets

Where the women open their second-story shutters
Calling you up from the gutters
That stream with bourbon whiskey

Tragedy descended quickly, the rain slows to mist
And the red-nosed aristocracy smile, blessed
On the dark streets that beat with feet

We tripped and skipped bourbon-drunk
Through damp bayou air and cigarette smoke,
Beads and whiskey from Tennessee.

God smothered what we thought He couldn’t reach,
Taught us what the Blues failed to teach
On those uncertain streets that beat with feet,
Lost souls and whiskey from Tennessee

Rachel Boury currently lives and writes in Chicago, IL.

The Beach at Douglas

a photograph of my mother’s family:
they stride through the frame in jumpers,
scarves, anoraks, each in a different direction.
Big Susan caught half leaping, my aunt’s
reaching arms, and Nana’s pointed nose
remind me of a flock of seagulls scattering,
about to rise.

My mother shakes her head fondly
at this photograph, saying what a funny lot
they are, and by funny she means peculiar,
and by lot she means group, clan, collection
of odd souls thrown onto a grey beach
in the ‘70s, with only blood to bind them,
scarves to shield them from the wind
rustling their anoraks, the wind
sweeping the sand into the sea,
the sea onto the sand, the wind
whipping between these frozen figures
held in flight; stopped from scattering.

In the picture, my mother wears flares, round
glasses, and the grimace she makes in the bright
sun, or the face of the wind. She was first to scatter
from the cold beach, the island of wet promenades
and palm trees, bent by Irish winds
where her sister still lives, dying
of decay in her brain, the grey
matter dissolving, synapses faltering:
her thoughts scatter, her hands shake.

My mother, flown across a sea,
an ocean, and stalled on a dry
continent far from the beach,
from anoraks and the reach
of the wind, shakes her head,
says what a funny lot, and drops
the photograph into the scattered pile,
the shriek of seagulls
caught in her throat.

Holly Kent-Payne will soon begin the MFA program at New York University. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.