Blood Dazzler

Won't be but a minute is the first poem from Blood Dazzler that really caught my eye.  It's another poem where the details capture me, and put me in a different place.  I can see a southern family, planning for the impact of Hurricane Katrina, just wanting to get out of town quickly and making sure that everything is taken care of.  In their hurry to leave, they decide to leave the dog tied to a tree outside.  "Just leave him some of that Alpo and plenty of water".  It's easy to picture the dog being stuck in the back yard, tied to a pole, wagging his tail and eagerly waiting for his owners to get home.

She Sees what it Sees is the next poem I want to talk about.  The language that is used here is incredibly dark, and portrays a bit of a sense of hopelessness that had to be felt immediately following Hurricane Katrina.  "Babies balanced in the air" and "withering the strength of stoops" are two of the darker lines to me, bringing to mind chaos and destruction.  "It has provided hard passage, sparkled its trickery and shepherded them to death before." That line to me is both powerful and dark, and an excellent closing line in the poem.

"Weather is nothing until it reaches skin,
freezes dust, spits its little swords".
These lines, the opening to the poem Katrina, are especially effective when knowing what these poems are about.  The way that most everyone in New Orleans undoubtedly felt the same way immediately after the Hurricane hit.  This line is just spooky good.  I actually got chills reading it, and it makes sense to me.  for all the complaining that people from Michigan do about the weather, to see someone who was truly impacted by the weather, it makes what we deal with up here seem like nothing.  Powerful stuff.