Tag: September 11

Suburban Psalm by Leanne Shirtliffe

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Suburban Psalm

I walk through the valley of suburbia
seeking no more evil. Two women,

stooped with back cracks over sidewalks,
collect the daily litter of others. Two

streets over, a multitude of child-painted
birdhouses sway from fledgling elms

planted in a boulevard, invisible to all
save nesting birds and slow walkers.

There’s a dream to carry
where we see goodness and mercy

comfort us through a single day. Look!
He braked so a car could merge. She

shovelled her neighbour’s walk. A stranger
stopped to say, “Your scarf is so beautiful.”

*

Born and raised in rural Manitoba, Leanne Shirtliffe is a writer and educator now based in Calgary, Alberta. Some of Leanne’s recent poetry appears in The Kenyon Review, The Baltimore Review, and Funicular. She writes the Substack, Chasing Wonder.

Three Poems by Louisa Muniz

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We Will Remember

On the internet you can listen to the 9-11 conversation between
passenger Todd Beamer and operator Lisa Jefferson,
moments before Flight 93 went down.

I remember Jacqueline, my second-grade student,
who drew me a picture of a building ablaze
with people jumping from the top floor window.

I was so scared, she said. At first I thought it was bad weather
we were having but it was so much worse.

I can’t remember what I wore last week but I remember
on that day I wore a pink linen skirt & a matching knit top.

I can’t remember what I did with that outfit but I remember
I could never bring myself to wear it again.

I plant forget-me-nots every summer but I can’t remember
if they’re more partial to shade or sun.

Twenty- three years ago, I knew nothing
of digging up the earth to stay grounded.

Twenty-three years later, rain is falling in sheets
& down the street a car is floating in water.

And a man who lives alone in another town
has a leaking roof & is about to lose everything.

And a man who is a convicted felon has promised
to make our country great again.

It’s the year of the snake.

Outside the wolf moon is full—
a catharsis in naming things you wish to let go.

Everywhere we exist we will remember
the weight of what was.

*

Red Sirens

The common tern sits in fractured light
for hours on the ice pond.

Winter in her bones.

Its days are the length of a winding river.

I want to tell you about melancholy. It’s ancestral—
a blanket of resolve hand-knitted upon me.

I’ve grown fond of being alone.

Is each day an un-mapping of never going back?

In the dream I break into a house.
I must save my children. I search
and search but I can’t find them.

What do I really seek?

Across the footbridge the baby sparrow
finds refuge in the leafless tree
that aspires to the sky.

It’s left its nest and won’t return.

But what of this brave new world,
a voice asks.

No sun to warm its wings or seeds
to speak of beneath the barren sky.

In the distance—
sound of red sirens
screaming.

*

The Weight of Warmth

January—
gray-eared, stretches out like a cat.

Blooming shades of purple. I tire of my mood.
Alexa plays Gymnopedie No.1. on loop.

Intentional simplicity.

No smell of tulips clawing through the dirt.
The sparrows interrogate the empty feeder.

I roam the house slippered in thought.
Best feeling thought, I tell myself.

I build a house of summer sky & sweetgrass.
Design the orange door leading out, open.
Drag my feet from room to room.

In the bedroom, I discover
the dormant orchid awakened.

The flower buds swell.
The petals poised in promise.

I squeal in delight like a solitaire singing
its tinny song to no one but itself.

The winking sun sprawls across the bed.
I lay down next to it.

Hitch on to the weight of its warmth.

Later, the wind—flutters, swells, sways—
to the winter blues of dusk.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Jelly Bucket, PANK Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains was released in December, 2020. Her chapbook, The Body is More Than a Greening Thing will be published in the spring of 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

If You Knew by Susan Rich

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If You Knew

this would be the final person
you’d ever kiss; this the last toast-
scented neck you’d lean towards

under an arched earlobe—
then perhaps you’d rest a minute,
more inhaling anarchist curls

casting curtains around your heads.
Even if this were just a penultimate touch:
neckline, lips, scent of apples—

what more could you ask, except
for time to slow—
then stop—as if in a children’s game

of statues, or in the fable, where
couples stumble into an underwater cave
opening outward towards a new country—

similar to the summer you turned twenty
and interlocked fingers with a stranger—
his limbs winged with a bronzed shine.

How this came together escapes
you now. What remains
are the tracks of his hands—

the most intimate touch,
until now—intuited as
in the way a cloud color transforms

in the indigo bowl of sky,
all of itself and another.
The way the sacred world

above the collarbone captures us
pinioned, tucked in, and never
in want of anything more.

*

Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Her most recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). She co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) and Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation). Susan’s previous poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World–winner of the PEN USA Award. Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is forthcoming from Raven Chronicles Press.

Brooklyn 9/12 by Sara Kandler

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Brooklyn 9/12

We roam
our Brooklyn streets
neighbors huddling
all of us ghosts

chat softly with our young son
gaping construction site
fat pigeon circling

while tiny papery fragments
fall from the bright
September sky
settling on our forearms

We blow at them
and wonder
fibers of a love note?
pencil shards?
a fingernail?

No choice
but to inhale
these ashes
the nuclear fallout
we’d only imagined

Radio voices tell us
this is not a war
between East and West
but we feel it so
the clash of cultures
our sorrowful bequest

How can we stay close
in this tsunami of distress?

At night our toddler
drifts off to sleep
nothing to do but
curl around him
our backs arched into
a bony heart
a cage
a brace
a frame

Nothing to say
no words
no lexicon
no name
for this disaster
this massacre

Leila saïda
my husband whispers in Arabic
good night
kisses our son’s doughy forehead
the quiet metronome
of his breathing
so soothing

then movement below
something shifting
land forms drifting
readjusting
leila saïda
a soft spoken promise
draws the dunes of Fire Island
toward those of El Jadida
to form a modern day Pangea

and we dream
of another radiant morning
the ground trembles
then surges skyward
tall towers of stone
this time arcing
bonding the continents
finally, we’re home

*

Sara Kandler is a passionate reader, writer and teacher of creative writing, journalism and memoir. A former journalist with an MS from Columbia University, she currently teaches English and French at the German International School of New York. Sara also has a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University, and has taught Literary Journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York. She has lived and taught in France, Morocco, and the United States. She now resides outside of New York City with her husband and three children.

Revision Lesson by Erin Murphy

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Revision Lesson

The faces of my former students
blur together like the crowd
in Pound’s metro station:

petals on a wet, black bough.
But you are the only student
I’ve had who suffered

such a public loss. And so,
nearly two decades later,
I can still see you

sitting on the right side
of the classroom, your long legs
tilted to fit under the small desk.

It was my first semester teaching
creative writing. I felt I had
something to prove, though

now I’m not sure what.
That I knew what I was doing?
That I wasn’t a pushover?

That despite the reputation of poets,
I wasn’t flaky or sentimental?
All of the above, I suppose.

I must have been afraid
any display of emotion would
crack my professorial armor.

Our introductory class covered
poetry and fiction writing.
You and your classmates read

and wrote poems and stories
that we critiqued in workshops.
You preferred the concrete cause

and effect of narrative, the mechanics
of getting characters from Point A
to Point B. Poems were squirming

fish that slipped between
your fingers; it was as if you
didn’t trust them. You set your

story one year into the future.
I had decided in advance
that I would treat your work

the way I would treat that
of any other student: objectively.
I would not assume

the character’s experience
was your own, even though I knew
from faculty lounge murmurings

that it was. I would not offer
sympathy. Sensitive topics
are par for the course

in creative writing. In the years
since you took my class,
I’ve had students write about

childhood abuse, sexual assaults,
gambling, and drug use. Self-harm
is a common theme, especially

among young women, though
I once had a male student write
a creative nonfiction essay

about his former addiction
to cutting his gums. In graphic detail,
he described repeatedly puncturing

the pink flesh above his molars
until he drew blood. Some students
need to learn the difference between

writing personal journal entries
and writing for an audience.
Others may benefit from a referral

to health services. But you didn’t
fit into either of these groups.
When it was time to discuss your story,

I jumped right into critique mode.
Give us a flashback or two
to develop your character,

I suggested. Try incorporating
a specific memory. Add some dialogue.
At the end, you—

I mean your character—
reflected on the one-year
anniversary and said

Everything will be alright.
Your resolution seems a bit forced,
I said. Maybe find a way to suggest

to the reader that she’s
trying to convince herself.
A month later, I would see you

dancing at the winter formal
in a blue polka dot dress, flinging
your arms into the air as if

launching missiles. But that day
in class, you folded yourself
over your notebook, scribbling

furiously. Your classmates painted
the tile floor with the soles
of their shoes. I suggested that you

build tension by withholding
information. Don’t tell us
right away that it was

September 11, I said. Wait to tell us
that the protagonist’s father
was one of the airline pilots.

What I did not say:
I’m sorry.
What I did not show:

I’m human.
I am. I am. I am
still telling.

*

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Diode, Southern Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erinmurphypoet
Twitter: @poet_notes