Dasia Moore
Dasia Moore is a poet, journalist, and queer child of the Black South. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including The Offing, Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Aunt Chloe, and The Boston Globe, where she was a magazine staff writer. Dasia holds her MFA in creative writing from New York University. Raised in both Carolinas, she now lives in Durham, NC.


Eating Good in New Orleans                  

“What kind of bodies are movable and feasts.” - Morgan Parker

I seen the meat fall off the bone. I took my teeth
and made it come. How easy, killing dead a living thing.

Red wine reduction, voiceless duck, radish, baby
green, drop of citrus, maybe, to cut the sweet.

Here it is: I ate good in New Orleans. I stayed in a big new
house with rooftop views. The Superdome sat bloated

on the skyline. The ghosts sat on their rooftops, too. I cried
while I was eating. Brown sugar, butter, banana flambée,

brown roux gumbo, gator nugget, wild rice dressing
tasting like home, rum-sweet hibiscus, blackened lime,

fat from the duck, sinew stuck somewhere in my mouth
where no one could see. My stomach hurt—

A whole row of tourist houses. A whole ’nother being built.
From the top of mine, I feasted my eyes, the sun rose,

I seen the city skin blackened to my taste. I left one bite
on my plate to appreciate what I had devoured. How easy,

juicy, thick. The first time I ate for real was in my cousin’s
kitchen. Another old city. Don’t none of us live there now.



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