Laura K. McRae Twilight in New Orleans Mint-garnished tumblers sweat into our palms, and the quinine prickle of gin and tonic cuts the thick waft of magnolia petals threaded through a copper and steel twilight. Tires slap the road, and the velvet-gravel voice that floods Bourbon Street can’t be Louis Armstrong. Mother said she met him in the ’50s, but then, she said so many things. Smoke bruises my cheek, and I can see the girl’s face in her cigarette’s ember, young and too nonchalant for the night.
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