~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Sean F. Munro

Hospitality

A tourist pays three hundred a night

for a shotgun on Esplanade

that was a home until the landlord

swallowed the math.

The cleaning fee migrates to Austin.

The woman who scrubs it drives from the East,

her gas burntup faster than her wage.

Mardi Gras generates a billion.

The folk who build the floats

are paid by the float, not the hour,

priced per spectacle.

The throws stamped in Guangzhou

end up in the storm drains

and the storm drains swallow the lake

and the lake forgets its own mouth.

Jazz Fest books the headliner for six figures.

The brass band on the corner

splits four hundred between five

and the corner claps.

The hotel tax should fix the roads.

The convention center      expands.

Entergy hikes the rate per degree.

The grid collapsed in August.

The grid collapses in August.

The grid is always      August.

Who owns Bourbon Street?

Not anyone who sweats here.

The restaurant       check Delaware.

The building          check Delaware’s teeth.

The city will feed you, bury you,

throw a parade for both,

charge you for the permit

and mortgage the next storm

to a company that doesn’t know

your dead or you’re dead.

Sean F. Munro is a poet, professor of English, associate editor for Lavender Ink / Diálogos, & executive director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. Sean also co-curates The Splice Poetry Series and founded LitWire: the literary events calendar of New Orleans. Recent or forthcoming poetry, criticism, and translation can be found in Annulet, The Texas Review, Jacket2, Some, Peel Lit, and mercury firs. More at seanfmunro.com