NEEDLING

Seagulls holding catfish just out of the water, their wings flapping, the fish fighting, until the fish dies. A large city water fountain. I’m ridding into town on my big motorcycle. My super dog is running besides me. We both have sunshades on. The cool of cool, except when I get into town, I don’t recognize the roads. Did New Orleans change that much since I was last here? I veer to the left, turn on to what I think is a road, though I’m not sure because everything is under construction. I find myself ridding on a public plaza. A huge man-made water area in the middle built like I’ve never seen one before. There’s no edges, no barriers, nothing which delimitates the water area from the dry area. It flows in and out in small waves. It’s like they built the concrete flat, and then let it slop down to form a cone-like hole in the middle of plaza, which they then filled with water. Except it’s not a cone throughout as I found out, because I rode my motorcycle right through the water, still looking as cool as can be, my dog swimming besides me. It slopes down to a little deeper than waist level then it levels out and stays flat. Large catfish all over the place. It was difficult not to hit them as we rode our machine by. Seagulls diving down, and lifting them out of the water, keeping them out of the water long enough for them to die, then putting them back on the water so they could chew without having to fight. Chewing seagulls? We drove back out of the water. There was a cop standing there looking at us, but he did nothing. So we parked next to a park bench made of concrete slabs, one of many surrounding the water hole, and sat ourselves down to dry in the sun.