This is a poem about the disaster in New Orleans by Ibbetson Street Press Arts Editor Richard Wilhelm that I plan to read at the Katrina Relief Reading Oct. 18 at the Old South Church in Boston at 7PM. --Doug Holder


ELEGY FROM THE SECOND LINE

After the flood—
a bitter drink,
crimson words,
the poor herded at gunpoint—
slack faces of the waiting, waiting
for relief or for death—
sky empty of everything
but the final notes
of a brass band dirge
falling across the lake.

--Richard Wilhelm