I pass the corpse of a dead dog every day on the way to the grocery store. Its odour, like all the foul odours in this city, is preceded and followed by the stench of vomit that even the flood rains can't wash away.

I've learned to stand in awe of this place, its brutal beauty, the bohemian flower girls peddling bikes they built by hand, the flesh parade of yuppie joggers, dodging gun-toting teens riding the stolen bikes of the self-same bohemian flower girls, and a human statue collecting dollars in the rain to help pay for his condo-converted slave shack.

But I can never get used to the stench of that rotting corpse, an intimation of my mortality, my obligation to the imperatives of flesh and time.

In the dead dog days of summer I search for a home that is immune to the hurricane floods, a forlorn hope in a city under water.

Written by © Nevada Kerr
18th July 2002.