join the jazz funeral/ listen to the rehearsal/ pick the sweetest rose and crush it till the petals fall

take shelter/ get hitched/ fry a dead catfish/ have a little Catholic mass/ count the seconds between the thunder and the flash

clap your hands/ kiss your friends/ wander ‘round the river-bend/ swing your bodies into a sweat and be pushed into the wharf

dry off in an old Creole cottage where a piano trundles across the floor/ improvise/ be hypnotized/ hear a dogged old man sing something he heard one night/ hop on the red streetcar for a dollar twenty-five and take it down to the end of the line

smoke a Cuban/ see a pelican, the shadow of a fish in its mouth, drag a trail with its feet up the snaking river…/ meet the lover, the juggler, the tarot card reader

get on board the psychedelic steamboat/ parley with the ghosts of Toussaint and Capote/ picture yourself in a line-up of all this world’s saints and sinners, the children of a city/ I’m telling you to

“Let the good times roll.” ∎

Words by Eoin Hanlon. Art by Poppy Williams.