The Arcade

The Furniture Store

Down on St. Claude and Franklin, in the upper 9th ward of New Orleans, there is a bespoke furniture store that sells handmade room sets in the Louis XV and XVI styles. This is an old, old store. It is by appointment only that one can browse furniture that invites ghosts of a different era who knock about the show room. No live person is ever seen inside. Who buys these curiosities is a looming question in the neighborhood. These pristine sofas and double-wide mirrors need big, big rooms...not the narrow ones in the shotguns and doubles that make up the majority of the houses in the Marigny/Bywater. Perhaps kings come from Europe. Perhaps Yankees from New York or Connecticut or Maine.

Across the street is where the locals shop. There you can layaway a mattress or a toaster oven or any number of useful items. The customer is always king, and there is activity and conversation and gossip. After shopping, one can satiate their hunger with a McFish or an ice cream or sip a coffee off the dollar menu at the McDonalds across St. Claude. Most people go for the 52" plasma screen that is always broadcasting CNN. It is a good place for political debate and to see the nice looking boys in their low swung trousers...their backsides swathed in colorful under garments.

Flowbee

Skyping with Mathilda

The Cone of Shame

Destiny and Pepper

Destiny imagines herself in a Mad Max film...

or that one about a boy and his dog.

Only, she and Pepper are both girls.

"Walking on the slabs," she says...

"where the hospital used to be...

"I feel the end of the world."

"Not the brutality," she says,

"but the loneliness.

Sometimes Pepper catches the scent

of a dog that was left behind.

She can smell them everywhere...

The ghosts of her kind.

In the back of her throat,

she tastes the end of the world.

Not the brutality.

But the loneliness.

"The Man"

Mr. Joe

Audubon

Mrs. Carmella Prays a lot

TV

Dishes

Mathilda is Born and I'm now Uncle Patrick

Chemistry

Corey