Ground Null Set: A Memorial Poem

We know the date well. We know the hour, even if this morning it passed on the very edge of dulled nerves. Anxiety is a phone call, a FoxNews alert, a broadcast interruption, that drags the heart toward the basement, where people and dreams were crushed in the old inertia that shook a runway in Boston, or a turnstile in Maine.

Today is also Tuesday, just like then.

In honor of this day, I post a poem I wrote nearly a year after 9/11. I have many 9/11 poems; this one addresses the pain of being a survivor.

We can't forget those who were left behind. They are many.

new york times in ridgewood, nj

the milk has turned bad in the frigidaire
your start to the day, cold, shaped in glass
the english muffins, green, wet and matted
in the plastic bag clipped tight, moldy mass

dirty socks, draped over the rim of jogging
shoes, stiff, and I’ll be damned if I pick them
up for you, or the ladder on the house, leaning
like a tower, windows dirty from inside fogging

the mailbox overdue, fully gestated, delivery
to be induced, or they will
force a caesarean, though i think miscarriage
or abortion and of the NYTs bundled on the path
you won't carry in your arms, though

the press has pressed itself against the patio
doors and through the phone lines and traipsed
into your favorite part of the yard, at night
talking about all of you - like friends - on the radio

while i sleep vertically, looking over where you slept
(the perfect mattress we jumped on in Mattress World
from the ledge of our dreams where hope was kept
and the weight of your arms around my waist, curled)

my feet anchored against attacks on the upper parts
of my fatiguing structure, swaying breathing
the injury like a spear in the side bleeding glass
and i fight not to collapse in a heap of fallen hearts

lights on in the night, all night, doggy-dog licking
the wounds on the back of the kitchen door
whining search for a walksy through the once present ever
after, the battery dead in the hallway clock unticking

i hung up on what you last spoke, and on the white house
and every other dismembered voice
best wishes still on the answering machine blinking
winking thinking shrinking sinking;
sinking;
sinking

8.07.02
©Bill Gnade/Contratimes 2007. All Rights Reserved.