April 7, 2008 at 12:33:33

A Writer's Damaged Sword Arm in New Orleans

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Georgianne Nienaber (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

The young man hitches up his baggy pants and wiggles his hips in a gesture of hatred and defiance and snatches Abe Lincoln from the writer’s hand and struts down the street. The writer’s eyes fill with tears for one moment—not because of fear, but because of the irony of it all.

An hour after the encounter, the writer is driving “home” to the mattress on the floor and sees that she is being followed, negotiates a few quick turns to confirm her suspicions, does a quick U turn to gain the advantage of surprise, peels away, douses the lights, and loses the car. Was it the angry young man? No way to know. Driver’s training is courtesy of a cop friend from Chicago and crazy investigative reporter she knew back in the day. It all comes back, along with memories of scaling cyclone fences in the Chicago projects as part of “escape” routes planned by her crazy friend who lives vividly in the vaults of memory.

The mattress on the floor seems awfully inviting and the writer snuggles into her daughter’s patchwork blanket that goes everywhere with her on the road. There is little comfort and even though the humidity is high and the apartment very hot, her body shivers uncontrollably as she drifts off to sleep.

Songs of spring birds relentlessly encourage consciousness and uneasy thoughts about the decision to live in New Orleans for six weeks. But the stories need to be told and the broken writer remembers a column that film-maker Michael Simmons wrote for the Huffington Post about poet Edward Sanders and “investigative poetry.” click here

The writer pulls up Simmons’ column on her laptop. The signal is pirated from the attorney who lives next door, but he says he does not mind. Simmons was particularly taken with a poem in the recoded set called “Unearned Suffering.”

Simmons says, “Edward Sanders' recordings of Poems For New Orleans has been called one of the great American epic poems, on a par with Whitman and Ginsberg.” It turns out that The New York Times' about.com website named the recording The Best Poetry CD Of 2007, saying: ‘Sanders utilizes his Investigative Poetry techniques and aesthetic to give the full backstory to the unbearable tragedy still in progress in New Orleans.”

Yes, the unbearable tragedy is still in progress, and people have been telling the writer that they need journalists to continue writing about what is and is not happening in New Orleans.

“It's a chilling, stark paean to those ‘born with anvils on their souls,’ the collaterally damaged of child labor, dangerous work, and those who make ‘the calm life glow for a few.’ The piece ends with a comparison of Hurricane Katrina to ‘unearned suffering worthy of the days of Poseidon,’” Simmons wrote.

Still feeling guilty, for all of the “unearned suffering” that she is privileged enough to escape, the writer piles her things into the battered Toyota that is home on the road and flees to Acadia.

Along the way, her daughter, who is about to graduate with a degree in documentary filmmaking and a young woman’s sense that she can accomplish anything, calls with worry and a question.

“Mom, when are you coming home?”

The writer laughs at the question coming from the child who four years ago could not wait to distance herself from her mother.

“Did you think I would miss your graduation? Home in six weeks.”

Silence.

The writer tells her daughter that she loves her and that she should begin now to exercise her inherited sword arm so that she is strong enough to hold the camera and focus the lens on the world. She hopes her lovely daughter will be able to find her way, looking up, but careful not to stumble.

The writer rubs her sword arm and the tattoo of the split eagle feather—symbol of the wounded warrior—and says a prayer that her child's sword arm will remain strong.

1 | 2

Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota, New Orleans and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.