Litany of Our Lady

Abstract

Litany of Our Lady Brenda Marie Osbey (bio) our lady of the sidewalksthe pavements and the crumbling brickthe mortar rock and oyster-shell roadsour lady of sorrows and sadnessesof intolerable agonies tolerated dailyof drifters grifters scrappers and scrapersour lady of dudes and dicks and pricksof petty thieves and of whoremongersof piss-swelled guttersand divesand the grimed over windows knotty-haired children peer through;our ladyour lady of boys shot down in the darkdying in open lots along lesser used roads leading out of townof old men beneath interstates sitting, standing, walking a block or so away and back;our lady of lost and found and forgottencast-off ditchedof what was and never will be againof aggrieved and bereftaccused indicted surrendered up to deathof old tar-colored women in plain or checkered housedresses telling aloud their rosaries and rosaries and rosaries of faith;our lady of ladiesand of church-ladies-in-waitingof young girls with hard uncertain breasts and promises of school and school and more school even than that; [End Page 13] our lady of go-cups and fictionary tourscigar bars absinthe barsof coffee houses open all night and churches closed all day for-admittance-please-ring-bell-and-wait and wait;our lady of antiques dealers dealing in saints in crosses, weeping cemetery angels, prayer cards in praline mammies, cigar shoppe indians in dwarf nigger jockeys whose heads have been lopped off and stand one hand outstretched, one cocked at the hip seeming not to be waiting but bargaining dealing for the return of their heads their heads their perfectly round perfectly lovely little nappy nappy heads; our ladyour lady of tired buildings listing to one sideand brick-between-cypress posts that simply will standas houses themselves give way around falling-down stairsleaving only a somethinga memory of a structureof spanish-tiled roofs and batten shuttersin a swampof a cityof ironworks and of plastero, lady ladyour lady of anythingat all [End Page 14] Brenda Marie Osbey Brenda Marie Osbey is the author of All Saints: New and Selected Poems (LSU, 1997), which received the 1998 American Book Award. She is the author also of Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman (Story Line, 1991), In These Houses (Wesleyan UP, 1988), and Ceremony for Minneconjoux (Callaloo Poetry Series, 1983; UP of Virginia, 1985). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and collections, including Callaloo, Obsidian, Essence, Renaissance Noire, Southern Review, Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now, The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry, 2PLUS2: A Collection of International Writing, Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology, Epoch, The American Voice, and The American Poetry Review. Her essays on New Orleans appear in The American Voice, Georgia Review, BrightLeaf, and Creative Nonfiction. In Spring 2005, she was appointed the first peer-selected Poet Laureate of the State of Louisiana. Brenda Marie Osbey is a native of New Orleans. Copyright © 2008 Southern Literary Journal and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature