The Second Line features spoken word storytelling. When read aloud, it at times sounds like it rides a beat as in hip hop or spoken word, yet the rhymes are as irregular and syncopated as in jazz. Sometimes it doesn't rhyme at all. The style is a reflection of the rhythm and music found in the accents and dialects of the people of New Orleans. Can you hear the rhythm in the following excerpt of The Second Line? Try reading it aloud...
I am sitting dripping wet, trying to forget the beads of sweat trickling down my neck and over my chest, around my heavy belly into the pool of hot and damp gathering in my draws. Good lord its hot. I'm in the shade and still baking, still waiting for Rita: the patron saint of desperate, lost causes. She stays busy in this city that care forgot.
A slow yawn stretches out of my mouth and curls into the syrupy atmosphere. I straighten up as if the bus stop bench were a pew and push wrinkles from my once neatly pressed, now sweat-wet clothes. My arms glisten, soaked in the steam rising from the cracked concrete beneath my feet. Above, blue bits of sky leak between low hung clouds; greyed white caps crested atop a sea of heat waves. I am bathed in August New Orleans, waiting for the Regional Transit Authority, Saint Rita, my ride home.
Have you seen her? She is a rolling porch from which we perch and witness the Central Business District to the city limits, Ghost Town to Bayou Sauvage. She rolls purple, green and gold like a shoe box Mardi Gras Float.
There she goes, loud as a back yard party. Saint Rita is coming grumbling, fotting smoke. She hobbles and throttles to a stop with a choke. Her doors, long and slim, fold open with a hiss. Black rubber steps lead up to bliss; a heavenly cool. I ascend and drop in a doubloon.
I move to the back, drenched in the funk of the day’s fever. Common courtesy left plenty room between passengers, and thank goodness for that. Imagine having to be packed like some booty on a pirate ship or piled on top of each other like hot coals in a barbeque pit. No, while there is space, we take it.
I am the seventh person aboard and, as I am apt to do, I sat near to no one, leaving space for observation, for imagining people’s life stories for fun. I pulled out my pen and started character sketching.