Mardi Gras et Blesser
Vient une fois par an pour demander la charité. Or: on not feeling honored in a New York dressed up as New Orleans.
Stay with me, this may upset you as I guide you from this ersatz parade.
Let me not ask for your sympathy or guilt. You can have your trinkets. I will wonder not at all if you know what you wear and why.
You are as unaware of the chicken in its high cage as you are your self-subjugation. You have never been down the bayou. Not the city, but where the ground tugs your feet. Tries to swallow you.
You know not that the church you condemn brought you these stories. You know not who we are—seeing now the very white output of colonization. And I do not, I repeat, want your sympathy or your penitence.
I want your pause. You do not know there is a birthday Tuesday; it falls on this sacred day. You do not know of the krewes, acts of charity, and flambeaux. But I am not your Virgil.
You know so little about community that you ignore us as we sit besides you. You do not ask while you reduce us to seasoning and toys. Still, if you went to our home we would feed you. Food with names you cannot pronounce. We would tell you patiently about the fast, about the horses, about the courir.
But you do not ask, and in all this I am certain you would be horrified were such vol the other way around. May I have more restraint. As our holy day and holy family are made mere t-shirts and cake. You do not honor us.
I am Charon, rejecting your doubloons. Leave you on the river bank to wallow. This fais do-do is not for you.
Vient une fois par an pour demander la charité. Mais, moi. Pas de toi.
Stevie, Brooklyn, 17 February 2026
