Selected Poems for September 12
From Section I - “Cloud Studies: Hudson River School”
The Magic Hour
Homage to Olmsted
Leaning on the balustrade like spoons,
your arms around my midriff, the river
at our feet, we hear the wing flap first,
a sharp crack that startles until a dark
shape flies past, stitching sky to water.
Without thinking, we too head south,
beyond streets, to gardens still blueprints
and clean fill overgrown with weeds.
Pressed against a plastic cyclone fence,
you breathe between your lips in sibilants –
Pssht, Pssht – imitating hungry hatchlings
as your grandparents, birding in Central Park,
taught you decades ago. I've seen flamingos
and bald eagles mistake you for their babies
at the zoo, but here no rustle answers your call.
Two lovers neck in the fragrant dusk. Pupils
dilated, we peer into the understory of pitch
pine and wild rose. Nothing stirs. We give up,
stroll home, not certain what type of night
heron it was, while the Hudson, mirroring
the luminous sky above us, rushes upstream,
garish as a bad bruise that begins to heal.
—First published in Mississippi Review
The Maneuver
Homage to Constable
An orange tug with tan stripes tows a matching empty barge
backwards upstream. In seconds they move out of sight
behind a building, but soon drift back, the tug now along
one side of the barge. Tethered but facing opposite directions,
they float downstream, again vanish. A few minutes later
they reappear, the tug now pushing the barge. Once more
they disappear, come back into view, side by side still, both
now facing the harbor. This time they will not return, but head
out to an oil tanker moored in Gravesend Bay where the barge
will fill up for a return trip upriver. Around the clock, this
stately slow-motion maneuver, the same harnessing of tide turn
and river current to a mechanical pas de deux of cumbersome,
yet delicate elegance, tug and barge, after many years I begin
to understand, like partners in a long marriage nudging each other
toward a common goal, survival, reverses serving their own
mysterious purposes, endlessly moving, endlessly moving.
—First published in Five Points
The Scissor Gate
Homage to Ruscha
The night was mild, clear. Beyond right field,
Manhattan nestled on the horizon like banked
coals. Though the Staten Island Yankees lost
to the Jamestown Jammers, we didn’t mind:
there was still the ferry ride home. Beyond
the scissor gate pulled across the prow,
skyscrapers beckoned like a ribbon of stars
that grew as we approached, dark bands
of sky and water shrinking as the tiny
buildings grew ever taller until they loomed
above us, suddenly solid, but shot through
with white light, the ethereal become all
too real, scaffolding on another world.
By the time the ferry eased into its berth,
we longed to put our feet on solid earth.
—First published in Southwest Review
From Section II - “September 12”
Excerpts from September 12
Tuesday morning. September 11. I am reading the paper. The phone rings. My sister in North Carolina. Are you OK? Sure. Pause. Why? On "Good Morning America" I just saw a plane fly into the World Trade Center. Didn’t you hear anything? I walk to the far end of the living room. The North Tower is so close, I must raise the sash and stick my head out to see the top. Dark rivers of smoke pour through windows licked by flames; a thick gray tornado’s snout rises from the roof. That tower will fall. I couldn’t be more sure. I have to flee. I run back, slam down the phone, in dirty clothes, no bra or belt, lock up, get as far as the elevator, run back to grab my almost dead cell phone, leave for the second time. 9:03 a.m. 9/11 begins for me.
*
Don’t worry, Angel says, Everything will be OK. It’s a doorman’s job to reassure. But I know he is wrong. How could two such tall buildings on fire within not come down? For now, standing outside the building lobby in the courtyard, I can see both towers. Can see thick black smoke, orange and red flames; can hear explosions, the steel groaning as it softens and sways, the crackle glass makes shattering.
*
A man hurls an office chair repeatedly against a window on a high floor. At another, glass already gone, two women perch side by side on the narrow sill, hold hands, pause a moment, look at each other, jump.
*
It will be a year before I realize the sounds I hear in dreams are people screaming.
*
More terrified of flying glass, of being burned alive, or crushed, of not being able to out-run the mob staring up when panic struck, I head south, stick close to the water. I’ll jump in if the towers fall, let the current carry me away, tread water until some boat rescues me. And if not, I'd rather drown.
[Continued]
—First published in River Styx
From Section III - “The Rock in the Glen”
A Brief History of the Town Named for an Erratic
“Pamachupura” or “Stone from Heaven”
- Historical Marker
It starts twenty thousand years ago. The last glacier,
retreating, deposits a granite boulder big as a house.
over time, trees grow up around it. Legend has it,
the Lenni-Lenape gather here to smoke peace pipes,
their trails meeting at the circle where Rock Road
crosses Doremus Avenue. A fieldstone farmhouse
On Ackerman dates to before the Revotutionary War.
until a little over a hundred years ago, the town is part
of Ridgewood, where kids go to high school during
World War II.In the 1960s, a teenage girl, walking
to classes, passes an early one-room schoolhouse,
now a family home. In 2001, long columns of Dutch
names still fill the local White Pages. The morning
of September 11, ten residents of Glen Rock,
New Jersey, go to work and never come home.
The Rock in the Glen
Homage to Whitman
Picture a pretty town, peaceful, stately
trees lining its streets, children walking
to school weekday mornings. Picture
cars, bikes, and pedestrians converging
on the two train stations at the same time,
the hurried goodbyes. Picture a quietness
after the commuters leave, the pretty town
like Sleeping Beauty waiting to be kissed
awake when they return. Picture the spill
of play, parties, and gossip across yards
without hedges or fences. Picture a breeze
rustling the oaks and maples, spreading
the news the morning of September 11.
Picture a pretty town brought to its knees.
From Section IV - “To the Dust”
The Old Neighborhood
Where is the man who sold the best jelly donuts and coffee
you sipped raising a blue Acropolis to your lips? The twin
brothers who arrived in time for lunch hour with hot and cold
heros where Liberty dead ends at the Hudson? The courteous
small-boned Egyptian in white robe and crocheted skullcap
in the parking lot behind the Greek Orthodox shrine whose
bananas and dates you could always count on? How about
the tall, slim, dark brown man with dread locks cascading
to his waist who grilled Hebrew National franks to perfection
and knew just the right amount of mustard each knish wanted?
The cinnamon-skinned woman for whose roti people lined up
halfway down Church, the falafel cousins who remembered
how much hot pepper you preferred? Don’t forget the farmers
who schlepped up from Cape May twice each week at dawn
to bring us whatever was in season at its peak: last August,
blueberries and white peaches. What about the lanky fellow
who sold green and red and yellow bears and fish and snakes
in plastic sandwich bags with twist ties; his friend, a block
away, who scooped still warm nuts from a copper cauldron
into palm-sized wax paper sacks he twisted at the corners
to close? The couple outside the post office with their neatly
laid out Golden books, the shy Senegalese with briefcases
of watches except in December when they sold Christmas
trees? The Mr. Softee who parked every evening rush hour
by the cemetery to revive the homeward hurrying crowd?
I know none of their names, but I can see their faces clear
as I still see everything from that day as I ride away from
the place we once shared. Where are they now? And how?
—First published in Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets
After The Disaster: Fragments
We are not starving.
We are wearing
shoes on our feet.
We have friends
to care for us; a roof
albeit borrowed,
over our heads. We are
husbands, wives
still; lovers, parents, children.
But the dust
of thousands has settled
over our living
rooms, an early snow
fall, in late summer,
the first winter
of the rest of our lives.
—First published in The MacGuffin
Get OVER it!
John J. Pelizza, Ph.D., has copyrighted this
little gem of advice: it says so at the bottom.
A small piece of tape still sticks to the top;
you can picture it in some office cubicle
next to the computer. On the first trip back
four days later, we find it on the sidewalk
below our apartment, torn but intact, gritty
with dust. By what miracle had this 6 by 9
oak tag card survived? From which floor
did it fall or float down? Whose office did
it adorn? What happened to him? Or her?
Years later we are trying to get over IT.
Ars Poetica
Let’s not romanticize bodies
falling. Others may use float
or dance; I refuse to pretend.
They were not graceful, quiet.
They fell unbelievably fast.
Straight down. Head first.
Some screamed. The sound
they made landing? Forget
thud. Louder than the wind.
—First published in Five Points
To The Dust
In our eyes. In the corner of a pocket.
Under a bed. On top of books.
Behind them. Along a window sill.
Trapped by screens. Glass. Suspended
in the air. It sticks to needles and leaves.
To branches, bark, shrubs, mulch. To soil.
On puddles, it floats. In gutters. Down
streams to rivers flowing into the ocean
until currents, slowing, can carry the load
no longer. It drifts to the bottom of the sea,
waits as mud. Sediments compress, solidify,
a record in stone. A world as once it was.
From Section V - “The Present”
After a Sleepless Night I Cook
The day we saw the shrike we play Shanghai
until midnight when, bleary-eyed from trying
to match tiles to make the pyramid collapse
and the green dragon breathe red fire
on your computer screen, we turn
in and still I can’t sleep for thorns
on which mice are impaled and wrens
crying as they dry in the sun. Then the owl
starts to squawk from his favorite dead branch
above the parking lot. An ambulance
barrels down Barham, the pattern of its
high-pitched siren signaling which life-
saving equipment will be needed, setting
off the coyotes, triggering in turn another
damn owl who contributes his hoots
to the chorus. I want to scream. When
the racket reaches its peak, the soft
gurgle of your breathing breaks into
a snore. Dawn bleeds through the drapes
before I nod off. That night I try
Joe Montana’s recipe for veal piccata
buried inside the Enquirer bought because
Little Joe was dying. To serve 2, take three
heaping tablespoons of capers and a whole
lemon peeled and chopped. Pulling back
pith with a paring knife, the juice
stings the slits in my dry fingers but,
married to the briny buds picked by hand
from the shrub with spines and reduced,
the sour lost its bite and was good.
The the WTC Health Registry
May, 2020
Nineteen years later, the latest survey
arrives in an email in the middle
of the pandemic.
The deceased recently exceeded the total
killed on 9/11, the US soldiers
dead in Viet Nam.
Allow 45 minutes, the instructions warn:
the survey is similar to previous
year's, but longer.
Call the 24/7 toll-free hotline should
flashbacks or raised heart rates
result at any point.
I feel my life has been shortened.
Choose
Mostly true.
New cancers added since the last survey.
Infertility questions. More about asthma.
How many days in the last thirty wheezing?
Ten. No. Fifteen.
PTSD lingering longer
than previously understood.
Still have trouble sleeping? Most of the time.
At least No nightmares
in several years.
Correction: Since March
bad dreams wake me all night long,
including the recurring
nightmares I had for years after 9/11:
last night I actually died
again in a dream.
Respondent Number 23214287
thanks you,
the keepers of these records.
For you we revisit what we’d rather avoid,
convinced our answers
might do some good.
For those of us
who still struggle, may we take
the offered help.
May it do some good.
May some future survey
find us filling in more spaces that say
Seldom.
Almost Never.
Not at All
Domestic Karma
Pair of pulleys, a circle of rope
stretched taut into parallel lines
dividing the driveway, lime tree
from lemon and tangerine. Small
square wicker basket, wooden
clothes pins. The week’s worth
of suspended shirts tickles aloe,
hens and chickens. Pillowcases,
damp sheets release memories
of rumpled sleep and bad dreams
to the breeze. Clean underwear
made fresh for the body you love
to undress; socks newly plumped
cushion steps. Monday morning
again. May this ritual help us get
through the week between tests
and results. May it bring
months of Mondays like this,
shirts loving sun on shoulders,
fear faded as favorite blue jeans
pinned to the line, socks ready
to take us wherever we want.
—First published in Atlanta Review