From 9/11 to a New
Year
vox poetica Contributor Series 2009
edited by Annmarie
Lockhart
Published by unbound CONTENT, LLC
Smashwords
Edition
ISBN 978-1-936373-13-0
Copyright 2011 Unbound Content,
LLC.
The book is available in print at most online retailers
Smashwords Edition,
License Notes
All rights retained by the original authors with the
exception of first-time anthology rights held by Unbound CONTENT,
LLC. Cover image is owned by Manny Beltran. Permission for use
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With much appreciation to Manny Beltran for his inspired cover art and to the writers for being so generous with their gifts.
Dedicated to the memory of those lost in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and those who lost their lives as a consequence of their involvement in the rescue and recovery efforts following the attacks. The death toll continues to climb.
Introduction
In 2009, vox poetica was launched, and the first year of its existence saw the beginnings of a tradition: the Contributor Series. The poems that appeared in the series were invited via calls for submissions sent only to writers whose work had already been published or accepted for publication at vox poetica, the idea being to create a conversation among these talented writers on a particular theme.
The first series was focused on 9/11; for many of the writers it was their first attempt at tackling the subject creatively. The second series coincided with Halloween and centered around the concepts of fright and delight. The third series was meant to explore the ups and downs of new year resolutions. Taken together, the poems of these three series create an artistic, thought-provoking dialogue incorporating a wide range of elements central and peripheral to the named themes.
It is my distinct honor and pleasure to present these first three series, this journey from 9/11 to a new year, in the first of what promises to be a long line of collections of fine work by fine writers on a diverse assortment of topics.--Annmarie Lockhart, editor
Contributor
Series 1: 9/11
Threnody
for the Survivors of September 11, 2001, by Ray Sharp
September
Morn, by Sandra Forte-Nickenig
Bone
Fragments, by Annmarie Lockhart
Tuesday
Morning Rising, by R Scott DeSena
The
Day We Know as 9/11, by Anna Alpine
The
tv is on at work, by Sarah Endo
Afterwards,
by Kim Klugh
9/11,
by Sharon Poch
New
Day, by Gianluca D’Elia
9-12,
by Danielle Cross
Remembering
that September, by Linda Ardison
Armageddon
9/11, by Jean McLeod
What
the tree has seen, by Cassie Premo Steele
Contributor
Series 2: Candy and Spirits
Table
Mountain, Cape Town, by John Lavan
POEm,
by Val B Russell
Trick
or Treat With Pets (How My Dog Sees Hallowe’en), by Ken
Karrer
Trick
or Treat, A Cinquain, by Mark Gooch
Shhhhh
... , by Joan McNerney
Who
Kissed My Neck? by Gianluca D’Elia
Greedy
Ghouls, by Karen Schindler
Jack’s
Demise, by Kim Klugh
La
Llorona, The Weeping Woman, by Ray Sharp
Jersey
Boys, by Bryan Borland
Days
of the Dead, by Cassie Premo Steele
Contributor
Series 3: Resolution and Resolve
Resolution
2009, by Gianluca D’Elia
Unheard,
by Chris G Vaillancourt
If
I stop to pick up a leaf, by Sarah Endo
Homelessness
... it’s real, by Jimmi Ware-Phillips
Recipe
for the Impossible, by Cassie Premo Steele
Resolutions,
by Eve Hall
What
Dreams Are Made of, by Neil Ellman
My
Uncertain Life, by James G Piatt
Lost
Dream, by Joan McNerney
Weathering,
by Dee Thompson
I
dropped it again, by Rae Spencer
The
Silence of Wind, by Kay Middleton
The
Navigators, by Joseph Murphy
The
Contributors
Threnody for the Survivors of September 11, 2001
By Ray Sharp
The angel of death flew
on silver wings.
Strange solitary birds clad in dark
feathers
Tumbled through the bright blue sky.
A blizzard of
confetti--scraps of lives
Torn asunder--swirled on air currents
stirred
By three thousand souls, or by their absence.
Tall towers slumped and
crashed earthward,
Their steel bones and skin of glass melted
and
Crushed by the inevitability of gravity that pulls
Us to the grave. Now,
eight years hence,
The rescuers who breathed the fine particles
Of
pulvered lives are falling to the same rare cancer
I came to know when it
took my father two years ago.
Were the silent seeds of sickness
already
Planted in him so far away on that fateful day?
I scattered my father’s
ashes on a desert hilltop
To which I may never return. In wind and
rain
And blazing heat they will join with the soil
That gives life anew.
In living there comes pain
And grief, but in death may we find
comfort.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
By Sandra Forte-Nickenig
In the unspoiled
country
time stops
for a bather in the dawn
of a new
day.
Across the river
time tunelessly ticks in the city.
A
bather steps onto a blue bath mat
A child packs snacks in his
Batman bag
A father sips a second cup of coffee
A mother sighs
as her child climbs the yellow school bus
A teacher takes
attendance as students whisper
A dog lifts a leg on his favorite
hydrant
A restaurant worker switches the sign to open
A street
washer cleans the gutters on Wall Street
A firefighter greets a
coworker at Engine Company 12
A worker presses the
button for the 102nd floor
A plane flies through tower number
2
The clock stops at 8:45.
Back in the unspoiled country
the
bather weeps.
Innocence drowns.
By Annmarie Lockhart
pool-bottom blue
sky
gone black with soul dust,
and the air reeked of
wreckage
‘til the rains came in late October
poster parade of the
missing
pasted up on impromptu prayer walls
that used to be
chain-link fences
or walls or trees or windows
in the immediate of the
falldown
no water, no power
no cell phone towers
standing;
all gone dead
but the shock
and
the shock
and the shock
of the shatter still reverberates
last calls and final
falls
as the place that was
became the place that is
a
sacred, soundless shrine of sky-strewn souls
By R Scott DeSena
Tuesday morning
rising
Two shadows
Turnpike
Turn my mind to stone
Traffic
screaming to a halt
Chills crawling to the bone.
Fires for
days
Billowing clouds
Smoke-filled ash
Filled with lost
souls
Crying for salvation
A new terror unfolds.
We will never be the
same
Still looking for excuses
Still looking for blame
We
are all losers
In a terrorist game.
Never forget the
images
Never forget the tears
Never forget the innocent
Not
in a million years.
By Anna Alpine
It was a day of new
beginnings.
My daughter started preschool
and my son was off to
first grade.
It was a day of heavenly beauty.
The sky was
bright blue with soft clouds
and the sun warmed my skin.
It was
a day of horror.
Lives lost and hearts shattered.
It was a day
of lost innocence.
We are no longer safe.
By Sarah Endo
the tv is on at
work--
I see people tumble in the sky
are they still
alive
air is soft, isn’t it
the tv is on at work,
but
can we please go home
be with people we
love
every instant
By Kim Klugh
the sun still
chases
the moon from the sky
leaves still curl then drift
from
the tree like flakes of soot
floating to the ground
sparrows
gather and fend at the feeder
for perching rights or dip their
beaks
to sip from the birdbath
towels from the dryer are
warm
in my hand
the phone still rings
I remind my stunned
children
we are alive
we have purpose
though altered we are
not
completely shattered
we must heal--it is our duty
to
become the messengers
for those who can no longer sing
or speak
for themselves
with God’s grace we must
go on claiming
wisdom
and courage as our allies
to do any less
is to
grant victory to evil
By Sharon Poch
Brittle brown days of
autumn
once lush with harvest scent
now smell of
ash,
cinders, human flesh
One plane, then a
second
slice through the innocent towers
and they fall,
screaming
into September earth
A bewildered blue
sky
blinks away tears of smoke
unaware that the world
is
forever changed
By Gianluca D’Elia
This day still stays on
my mind
Since the moment it occurred
No day is such a tragedy
A
catastrophe for my native land
A loss to my own family
And a
day that I once lied,
“Everything will be alright,”
When in
my heart, I was really scared.
At night the news still
releases stories
As I cry myself to sleep
And blow out the
dying flame of peacefulness
Set aside the past for tonight
A
new day’s coming
I close my eyes
And let tomorrow shine.
The writer, who was attending preschool on 9/11, dedicates this poem to the loving memory of his cousin, Joseph O Pick, who died in the disaster, and to all those who mourn.
By Danielle Cross
Ashes.
To ashes
we
pour our tears,
sculpt familiar faces with frantic
hands, paint
them with bleeding hearts.
Color has drained from this world, this
gray canvas reflecting
our hope,
our futility.
We must be
artists now, and we carry on, creating frescoes
from the
ground,
from metal
feather dust. To dust remaining
devoted,
even now
as we breathe
and it scatters
to the wind.
The writer dedicates this poem to the loving memory of her husband’s cousin, Tommy, who died in the disaster, and to all those who mourn.
By Linda Ardison
They leap and fall like
rag dolls,
Splay out onto the pavement.
There’s no one to
catch them
Or to snatch the others
From the glowing Staircase
B,
No one to blow the white ash
Off the world, once
smoke-swirl
Billows through the screaming streets
Until all
feet are white with new snow;
Over the East River, streams of
clean
Air clarify the sky, but no planes fly,
Except in
Washington, and Shanksville,
Plummeting to earth like silver
toys--
A day made perfect by September sun
Before the running
crowd cries out.
The twin towers flatten like the blocks
A
small boy stacks, then sweeps
His hand through in a power rage.
By Jean McLeod
The golems bring
warships to worship.
The priests pretend they believe.
The
heathens heap coal on the altar.
A magician pulls fire from his
sleeve.
Clowns run the liturgy at high mass
sycophants bay at
the moon.
The terrorists paint faces on airplanes
shamans fall
faint in a swoon.
The sinners and saints wear red cowls
it’s
hard to tell who is who.
The truth filters through filthy
windows
the lies and falsehoods shine true.
Fires in the sky à
la Tennyson
fling flames with a sulfurous smell
smoke billows
up through the heavens
and clouds reflect visions of hell.
Lovers
become incandescent
and leave their fiery path
to fighters and
screamers and schemers
who bake in a puddle of wrath.
The whole
world stops in its spinning
continents slip off their plates.
The
team that was losing is winning
enemies abandon debates.
The
world stews and festers with anger.
Our galaxy expands on its
own.
Suns explode without warning
and earth gives up life with
a groan.
By Cassie Premo Steele
In the middle of a city
park
women gather with each other
near an ancient magic
tree
and sing of what the tree has seen.
In the south, a woman
sings of eyes
stabbed open, and of other eyes sewn shut,
while
beneath the morning sky of blue,
children played on swings and
pigeons cooed.
No one moved when in
the north a woman
screamed, her teeth and tongue torn wide,
her
grey tone rising ‘til it turned to stone
and, wailing, fell upon
the ground nearby.
In the west, a woman
kept a constant rhythm,
laying bare hands against the wood,
with
heavy patience, as only a mother,
mourning her weaning child,
could.
Still in the east there
stands an ancient woman,
who calls upon the spirit with upraised
hands
of five-fingered yellow leaves in autumn light.
She prays
to bring back breath to all those
still sleeping, or dead, or not
quite,
as day descends and turns the tree to night.
Moonlit, the women
stand in silence
and raise a toast to all the tree has seen.
They
are drunk in honor of her memory,
what makes possible the songs
they sing.
Contributor Series 2: Candy and Spirits
By John Lavan
Your uphill path isn’t
haunted--even
baseball caps on hikers comfort you
until an
unusualness
when something warm and bony
gets on my back,
reaches and squeezes
my frightened wrist until
I let
go,
alarmed, of my chocolate
bar and the skeleton creature
whoops and
springs baboon
to the fallen sweet and grinningly
turns,
devours it in dust,
clicking
and there’s
horror
isn’t there?
when you panic
suddenly
gotten
onto
from behind
by a grinning
gripping
carcass
silently
from
behind
isn’t there?
By Val B Russell
The evening crept into
my room
Beneath the fullness of the moon
The hour struck just
ten that night
As I wrote by candlelight
I’d heard it said
once long ago
Its flame invoked the soul of Poe
You see it was
my secret dream
To outdo Poe and write a scream
Something
wicked to delight
A story of horrific fright
As I tapped the
keys to tell my tale
My laptop announced a new e-mail
I looked
at who the note was from
Apparently it was from “no one”!
Out
loud I said “this cannot be
Someone must be spamming me”
I
poised my hand and pushed delete
An action I would soon
repeat
Within no time I got some more
First twenty-nine, then
forty-four
Finally the spamming ceased
My frenzied fingers felt
released
Just as I sat back and sighed
My calm repose was soon
denied
The room became as cold as ice
I saw my breath and
shivered twice
My laptop screen became bright blue
A truly
terrorizing hue
I couldn’t move or close my mouth
My stomach
churned, my guts went south
When suddenly a face appeared
My
laptop screen a frame of fear
At first it looked an eerie
glow
Then became the face of Poe!
You can imagine my surprise
to see
The illustrious Poe gazing back at me
Within no time his
mouth did speak
His face was gaunt and his eyes were bleak
“I
plead, don’t tell me, nevermore,
For you are still my sweet
Lenore
Reborn as one called Annmarie
Your new name matters not
to me!”
I felt so shocked, my lips were dry
But I could not
accept this blatant lie
“I am not your sweet Lenore!
You
don’t belong here anymore”
Poe’s face turned grim at this
remark
His eyes were flashing bits of spark
I blinked as he
appeared to me
Beside my chair and touching me
I felt a chill
go up my spine
As Poet let out a little whine
“Oh sweet
Lenore, you are aware
I’ve come for you, do not despair”
At
this I pulled myself together
And left the chair where I’d been
tethered
My courage came to me at last
I reached the door in
one mad dash
I took the steps three at a time
Until I reached
the yard outside
I ran up the street then down the lane
My legs
grew tired, I looked insane
“I must be free by now,” I
said
“From Edgar Poe, the living dead”
But when I looked
behind me then
Old Poe was just around the bend
Above the
ground his spectre flew
And as he gained on me it grew
Above
the ground his body soared
Crying out for sweet Lenore
Until
his countenance did change
Into a Raven large and strange
Before
I could begin to scream
Dear Poe became a scary dream
I sat up
straight in bed in fright
And turned on every single light
So
real was the dream of Poe
It took some time to let it go
Just
in case, I checked my mail
Feeling rather week and pale
But as
all was just as it should be
To see no ghosts I was relieved
I
shut the lid and went to bed
Braved the dark and shed my dread
The
next day I would write this down
And steal Poe’s poetic
crown
Just as I was feeling smug
I felt the blanket being
tugged
When I sat up to wrest it free
Edgar Poe stared back at
me!
Trick or Treat With Pets (How My Dog Sees Hallowe’en)
By Ken Karrer
I just saw Rover
from
down the street
beg for something good to
eat
(embarrassing really, but)
nothing new about that,
except
he did it in a hat
right beside that old Manx cat
named
Mephistopheles.
You know the one.
I think he gave me fleas.
Dog sat
Cat
spat
Candies flew
Lots to chew
Now that’s what I
call
Hallowe’en!
By Mark Gooch
Ghostly
moans and
laughter
shadows silently glide
costume-clad boys and girls,
eyes wide
sweet treats
By Joan McNerney
There is a
witch
living
on the corner
where the four
roads meet.
Her eye is
evil,
her
nose crooked.
She lays down
the
tarot
pattern
with wrinkled
hands.
Asks “do you
wish
tea of wormwood
or henbane?”
She will enchant
your
mind now
into fields of
wild roses.
By Gianluca D’Elia