Three Love Poems by a Native

Three Love Poems by a Native Maxine Cassin I. New Orleans You have to be almost on top of the Mart to know it's really a crescent, even though all your life you have never understood how parallels become perpendicular and streets that run for miles without meeting suddenly encounter each other at their far reaches. II. Bastille Day What do we do when the fanfare ends?— when the last of the musicians is bathing his feet in the fountain and the tuba lies abandoned on the grass, dull and mute. The band drifts across the square in pursuit of tones that rise above the cathedral and disappear. The French horn clamors for wine in a darkened corridor beside the Presbytere. [End Page 1033] III. Jazz Funeral As they cut the body loose, he whose footsteps falter can no longer keep time to the staccato rain or the umbrella's tarantella. Our pulse is the drumbeat; the brass band—the sun— in this city that plans all its celebrations under the sky, taunting Jupiter. Maxine Cassin, co-founder (with Richard Ashman) of The New Orleans Poetry Journal Press, is author of four volumes of poems, the most recent being Against the Clock. Her work has also been published in such periodicals and anthologies as The Chicago Review Anthology, The Jazz Poetry Anthology, The Tennessee Williams Literary Journal, and The New York Times

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