Summer Local Writer’s Series Feature 7: Sally Beauvais

The Summer Local Writers Series at NolaVie features works produced by New Orleans poets and prose-writers as part of NolaVie’s ongoing correspondence with the city’s arts and culture. The writers selected will be drawn from diverse sets of intellects in order to paint a broader picture of the relationship between language and community, art and structure. The series will focus on writing that speaks to these critical relationships.

Most importantly, the series aims to carry on New Orleans’ legacy as a literary entrepôt. We will experiment with various forms of supplemental material, but the center of each feature will be the text. Put simply, the Series seeks to spotlight some of the good writing that’s happening here, and we hope you enjoy it.

Sally Beauvais is a student of Andy Stallings, a graduate of Tulane University, and currently dividing her time between writing and waitressing. She is a resident of Holy Cross and working on creating a lower 9th ward newsletter. Sally is a gardener, a reader, and the following are her poems.

Muzzle

Nestled in concrete,
how our silhouettes
bow out of lines.

You let the bug gently lay
a wing in your eye. Horses kick up dust.
A sprinkling of paint chips
spangles the warm quarters.

Benched, you sit by the bee-shocked bush.
Rectangles you
the sun.
Marries open mouths,
a breeze

strings I’s.
I fly out of an eye.

Up and newly plumb
a sun-shocked bench, I sit.
You’ve swum. A coincident-

al cross of T’s—I live
where you list, annul our arms

settle, lift.
***

What We Do With Our Hands While We Walk

You there, walking towards me as I’m walking towards you in flat sun. I don’t see you. I don’t see you because of rust trailing down my block of sidewalk. Because of blue ink dragged across my shirt. Because the sad clogs, the baseball caps nodding up and down by delivery trucks and the hoses beading into the street. And the wisteria to my right leaning towards the shade, and the picket fence posts erect for the sun. Because suddenly we are surrounded by dogs meeting, bounding together in diagonals across beaches. Who forged the first straight line, the one for all other straight lines to hold themselves against? Because last night in a dream we took down tents, hands touching.
***
Procession

May we impose the shadow
sinking Lincoln’s solid breast? We
mount a hollowed voice, if so,

if so, we cut the light.

Say firework, cars
ignite, single stars erupt
in bannered sympathy say

wreck

assume the worst
past, each night impresses
firmly upon the last, so

clap.
***

Places We Can’t Return To
here
bent an ear to the ground
and splayed instinct

a bench and peanut shells
insisting shape for weather here

certain here
it fell continually
the sun

and on the backside of here it
hummingbirds

Erik Vande Stouwe is the curator of the Summer Writing Series at NolaVie.