Taylor Bruce

“Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marigny in New Orleans is a pulse, a holdover, an invitation, a gumbo, a front line, a late night, a memory, a wish, a tonic.”

“Sitting with him, you can’t help but notice the bodily wear, the facial paling, the lonesome spirit I’ve seen in my widow grandmother, but it all changes when he speaks.”

“The view is panoramic: all shades of green grasses and hammocks, coins of light where bait fish run, the wide bay and brief look out to sea.”

“The dancehall is like a giant rib cage: soaring bentwood trusses, the band beating from the south end, a hundred or so dancers cutting across the floor.”

“I study the dimness of the stage for a certain boxerlike silhouette, for the larger-than-life figure that has every last person in the room squinting.”

“Skinny in his fraying Liberty overalls and felt top hat, he shows us his backwoods botany collection and a circus of salvaged-stuff thinga-ma-jigs.”