How do we work?

Once every few weeks a new topic will be displayed on the blog. Young people, ages 5 - 96, will submit their responses. Student writing will be posted as it is received. Know someone that would love to contribute? Pass the word.

Blog #14 Topic Choices:
Write about a place or an aspect of New Orleans that has influenced you OR use the words "Escaping the heat/to get out of the heat..." of New Orleans.

Submission Logistics: Submissions should be in response to the blog topic. Poetry and prose, up to 500 words in length, should be emailed as a Microsoft Word attachment. Emails should include author’s first name, age, and School.

Submissions can be sent to: youngneworleanswritingtogether@gmail.com
Submission due date: May 31st, 2012 @ 5pm

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Brooke - Mardi Gras

The problem is the to. We are going to…followed by place

Down in New Orleans. After the carnival has passed

and the tourist, who screamed in our ears for plastic

and stuffed animals, who have left the streets encrusted

with particles of themselves left over from the fight for

a coconut or a moon pie wrapper, have left for good.

We love that place, where the blues was born, where

the food is good and ethanol can swish around in cups

open to the air, for children to smell. They say in voices thick

with far, far away. And in New Orleans they transform into

people I don’t like. They wouldn’t like. Why does the city I

love allow foreigners to entice her with the economic promise

of tourism , with the empty promise of we’ll come back. Because

the people who love her back are forever sinking Down into New

Orleans. But she can never know. She will continue to endure

the foolishness of strangers. And we will continue to clean up.

Brooke, age 17
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