Everything smelt like ash around us, but I couldn’t look away from his face. I turned my head as far around as it could go as he danced around me.             “You don’t have to follow me with your head, silly.” He said, summoning just a trace of laughter into his voice.             A smile crossed my face, “But I want to look at you.”             A grin spread across his face. His hand pressed gently on the joystick continuing the slow circle around me. Outside of the circle he traced, another circle was closing in on us. We’d been running for so long that it felt good to stop.             “I want to be by the water.” He said last night, out of nowhere. We hadn’t seen anyone else in days, we wondered if we were the last two men on Earth. “If we have to give up, I want to see the river one last time.”             We decided to go back to the last good memory we had before all this started. To our spot by the river, where the row of industrial building

  Stuck in the grooves of my brain It occasionally raises its voice to say “Why carry me?”   I respond the way she did When gay rights activists Marched on the noon news. She looked across the table With knowing in her eyes and Said to me, “everybody needs Love.”   The smell of my Mamaw’s living room, The nice room where there is no t.v. Only décor and seating and scent, The room we never go in But I go in all the time   Vinyl furniture, Aged potpourri, Wood polish, Dust, probably mold, And if you lift the lid of the dish Where at the bottom all the striped discs Are stuck together, Peppermint   I don’t stay long because We don’t go in the nice living room And because she died after I’d gone I only needed to be Where no one— Not even I—go For a moment   To breathe in her nice room So I could carry it with me    

 

  If you missed our last live show,  Louisiana Words Live: Halloween , no worries! Go over to  motsdelouisiane.com  to watch our amazing readers! Find our featured writers: TQ, Jorge, Brenna, T, & J. Michael, plus open mic writers: Lily & Sam! 

The door to the antique shop opened, sounding the bell. Billy walked in hesitantly behind his best friend, Felix. It was an average antique shop. The shop was full of old books, incense, artifacts, paintings, and some decorative furniture. Billy and Felix had known of its existence since they were young kids and they had been to it a dozen times. Felix was a record collector and liked to visit shops repeatedly in hopes of finding valuable records. Billy, on the other hand, didn’t collect anything. He went along as he always did with Felix because he had nothing better else to do. The door accidentally shut into Billy’s face as they walked in. Billy grabbed his face in pain. He already had a black eye from getting hit in the face with a basketball by his nemesis and bully, Jason, during P.E. and his eye was still not able to open completely. “Sorry man,” Felix was sincere but he couldn’t help grinning at the fact that Billy just hit his head on a door. “That was kinda funny.” “I

  " Mais if y'all don't calm down, I'm never   going to tell y'all this story again!" Maman Rose's voice was harsh from years of Lucky Strikes and the occasional Prince Albert Cigar she thought she kept hidden in the cabinet above the stove, but us grandkids could see the twinkle in her rheumy eye. Les enfants , as she called us, were buzzing   on Halloween candy and cold drinks, but we knew she would only tell us this story once a year. We each settled into our favorite spots on her careworn furniture. The smallest were cross-legged on the hardwood floor of the house in Vacherie; the twins were sharing the black velveteen loveseat, each snuggling a pastel crocheted round pillow, and I was wrapped up in a granny square blanket, sitting on the pistachio colored armchair. Maman Rose had installed herself in her naugahyde recliner, and once we were settled, she got started: This was on the farm in old Labadieville, down the bayou. My Maman had nine ki

when i'm done  with this ash and dust wrap me in the quilt mother and mamaw  sewed together put my body in a  pine box if a box you must that should be enough to keep the carnivores  from clawing at the earth and there in the ground  which covers my body plant a young oak tree so that when i'm done and done more dust than bone what's left will nourish the tree as it grows and when you visit the tree think of me becoming the air that you breathe a way of returning  all that you gave me

How do I describe this? It’s the surprising moment when you hold a two foot alligator in your hands and you realize how soft their skin is and you feel the gentle expansion of their breath against your fingers and somehow it shakes you to your core and you don’t know why. And you start to question how you once laughed at that German documentary maker with his albino crocodiles staring into the abyss. It’s the reverence you hold for Saint Lucy who plucked out her own eyes with the same nonchalance that you plucked wildflowers as a kid. You consider her your patron Saint. But then one night your partner mumbles in their sleep: My eyes! They’re refusing! It is the moment in the dream where a man you can’t see but you know is there gives you a sheet of paper blank except for the five words: I hold ominous omniscience obscurely. And then you slide it back onto the slick dark surface. It’s when you toss feverishly in bed for hours and wake up to find all the walls and ceilings are co