Lazarus (Fragments of Persistent Joy)
Originally published in the June 2025 edition of Boudin
The morning after the floodwaters recede,
my neighbor's chickens are loose on our street,
red hens stepping gingerly over debris,
unexpectedly dignified. The elder next door,
Ms. Josephine, calls out from her porch:
They survived! Look at them struuuuuuuttin!
Her voice carries across the mud-slick pavement,
the scent of wet oak and diesel in the air.
Her laughter’s so much more valuable
than anything I managed to carry upstairs.
Mid-point of the twelve-hour committee hearing—
my testimony’s scheduled for hour nine.
Texts light up my phone: We're watching.
You’re not alone. Bringing sandwiches at 4.
In the Capitol bathroom during recess,
three of us huddle by the sink,
exhausted from being spectacles, sharing mints
that taste of artificial wintergreen and solidarity.
We look like raccoons, my friend says,
pawing at my face, and our manic giggles
bounce off institutional tile, a sound
they cannot legislate away.
The night forty-seven anti-trans bills
are introduced nationwide,
we project Paris Is Burning onto the side
of an abandoned Dollar General,
someone's generator humming along
with the ball scenes. When the cops come,
they just watch for a while, then leave.
Even they can't find the energy to stop this.
Our bodies lean into each other in the dark,
my head on Dee's shoulder, their cologne
like cedar and black pepper.
On screen, Venus Xtravaganza says:
I would like to be a spoiled, rich, white girl.
They get what they want, when they want it.
We've all memorized the line and whisper it
as she says it, our small spell against time.
After the sixth bill hearing,
I come home to find my housemates have built
a throne in our bathroom, ancient alleyway armchair
draped in gold fabric, plastic crown on the seat,
sign reading YOUR MAJESTY. The absurdity breaks
something open in my chest. We take turns sitting
on it to pee, royalty in the most contested room
in America, laughing until our ribs ache
with the release of being ridiculous
when they've tried to make us tragic.
In the community garden after the flood,
pulling waterlogged debris from the beds,
Troy finds a tomato plant, somehow alive, tangled
in fence wire carried by the surge. We replant it
in the center plot, christen it “Lazarus," bring it water
in a procession of mismatched containers. By August,
it produces exactly seven tomatoes, each one shared
between twenty neighbors, sweet-acid burst
against the tongue, the taste of what refuses to die.
The night they passed the ban,
we drink blue liquor at The Levee,
tongues stained like water test strips.
We commandeer the ferry
when Andy’s cousin’s shift is over,
guitars, camp chairs and empty bottles
of Mad Dog crossing the Mississippi
over and over til dawn. Closer to Fine
ping-ponging the battures, our voices
carrying beyond the riverbanks, dogs
in Sunshine and Plaquemine singing along.
On our camelback rooftop during the blackout,
all of South Louisiana is dark except
for occasional generator lights, like lightning bugs.
The heat is unbearable below, but up here,
a breeze. Someone passes a joint, its ember
briefly rivaling Mars. My chest is bare
in the darkness, scars silvered by starlight.
Tomorrow, we'll search for ice, for fuel, for news
of when power returns. Tonight, we find Orion's belt,
steady as ever above our fragile grid, a constellation
of unchanging stars naming nothing about us
but witnessing everything.
