and I'm going to write it down

The front porch is unfinished; as I step down the front four steps they rock back and forth a bit and my sense of balance is called into question. I'm going across the street to Miss Patsy's house to wash the towels so there are clean ones. Her house is absolutely nutty, painted orange and blue with banana trees all over, cages of nothing and cages of animals and a big orange Santa Claus next to a crouching ceramic angel. Earlier I heard a rumor of a $1600 operation she had on her bullfrog that lives in one of mentioned cages. Her three dogs bark as I walk through the back door, into a room smelling of the Belles basement on Schifsky Road, these dogs do not want me there. Miss Patsy wanders into the room and asks in her thick Southern accent, "That baby been born yet?"

I go back across the street, I can hear the beeping of the bridge on the river (beeping) it goes up and lets a tugboat through. A teenager bikes by on the levy. I sit on the couch and wait, we're all waiting for that baby, every time Caity has a contraction and moans my stomach cramps up. The feral cat named Biscuits claws at the window; curious as to the labor I'm sure, curious as any of us as to when that baby gonna be born.

Earlier the neighbor Summer came buy, dressed up all "Honkytonk for a Honkytonk party, oh no I don't usually dress this skanky," as she put it and pointed out to me how the sun was shining through the clouds onto that unfinished house in a very God-like way, and it's true, the sun is shining right on that house and this whole street in fact. Summer's boyfriend Christian comes out, with his tank top and tight jeans and his hammer, his masculinity is surely on display at all times and he winks at me and says, "How you doin' baby," and I nod and smile cuz that's the polite thing to do. He goes to the house next door to Miss Patsy's to work on clearing out flood-damaged wood. I hear he pushes tires around the neighborhood early in the morning for his workout.

I drink some coffee and go out on the porch with Missled, this tiny powerhouse of a woman, cabaret dancer and tattooed clown eyebrows wild and free, MAMA NOSE across her knuckles, and I ask her about how she deals with all the violence, or about her son Ottomadic Pilot, or about her drag show, or her cockroach infested car, and I listen to her stories. Her husband Eddie comes by with his twinkling eyes and warm smile and we joke, we smoke and talk. Missled has the loudest laugh in the Lower 9th.

This is a good block to have a baby on, it's a good block for lots of things that I want to remember and write down