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POETRY OF 9.11.01
Martín Espada, “the
North American Neruda,” has published seven
collections of poems, most recently A
Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchens which won an American Book Award and
was a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Another volume, Rebellion
is the Circle of a Lover's Hands (Curbstone, 1990), won both the PEN/Revson Fellowship and the Paterson Poetry Prize. His poems
have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Poetry.
He has published a collection of essays, Zapata's Disciple (South End
Press, 1998), which received an Independent Publisher Book Award, and is also
the editor of El Coro: A
Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts Press,
1997), recipient of a Myers Outstanding Book Award. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the
University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In 2000 he was named the first Poet
Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. “Alabanza
(‘praise be’)” appears in the collection Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002.
The
Chickasaw Plum is most appreciative of the Martín Espada’s permission to publish “Alabanza:
In Praise of Local 100.”
Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100
for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees
Local 100,
working at the Windows on the World restaurant,
who lost
their lives in the attack on the
Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook's yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.
Praise
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy's music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.
Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.
After
the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook's soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God's beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.
Alabanza. When the
war began, from
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lucia Galloway (Née Lucia Dick) Lucia
Galloway grew up in
Barn Building
When a new barn was built, all the friends and neighbors
came on the specified day to help put up the framework. . .
Homemakers of our day will no doubt be astounded at all the food
consumed . . .
--The Mennonite Community Cookbook
Although boxy and huge, the Twin Towers shimmered in the light . . .
--Time Out: New York
Waiters’
ghosts still scurry at Windows on the World
while
sixty phantom farmers raise the beams,
striving
in concert to bring up the frame
until
they’re halted by the clanging dinner bell.
Fifty
pounds of roast beef and three hams,
three
hundred light rolls, pickled beets.
A
stand of trees in rural
the
confines of a restauranta lofty world
agleam
in morning light, the cooking of ham
omelets
for the CEOs. A patron beams
approval.
But why the hell’s that bell
blasting
the morning’s lucent frame?
The
man who raised a barn still sees the frame.
The
plane’s authentic pilot, somewhere, knows the beat
of
his own heart, and terror like a bell
tolling
the split-second of a world
contracted
to the shimmer of a beam.
And
maybe he had grace enough to ham-
mer home a thought of Grandmother’s strong hams,
her
floury hips brushing the door frame
as
she fetched hanks of garlic from the beams.
Summer’s
harvest stores the sun that beat
on
the east-facing walls of the World
Trade
Center’s towers. And the belle
of
many balls at work in offices of
Hurd, and Hoolihan will never see
again the Hamp-
tons
and the beaches where she owned the world.
A
hundred and fifteen lemon pies could frame
the
ambitions of a rural wife. Does baking beat
basking
in the light of fluorescent beams?
The
towers’ upper strength relied on beams
resting
on lower verticals, sound as a bell.
There’s
never been anything that beats
American
resourcefulness: the Coke, ham-
burger
and side of fries; the will to frame
structures
that would tower over the world.
As
vacant moons beam on the world
of
HoneyBaked hams and Taco Bell,
the
automated hammers beat new rivets into frames.
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Candles: NYC
July, 1993
We get off at
to meet Margaret at one of the twin towers.
She could have come straight down;
instead she clears us throughRoy and me
so we can see the office where she works.
The view from her window
on the 83rd floor!
Pretty soon we’re
on the ground again, the three of us
strolling the arcade between another set of buildings
the one with the pyramid top
and the one with the dome.
This place is called “the Winter Gardens,”
and we stop to buy candlesginger,
for aroma therapy.
We eat supper on the promenade,
squinting through sunglasses
at Lady Liberty.
November, 2001
“Get off at
walk south until you hit the barricade”
are Margaret’s directions.
Park Avenue & Church.
We feel compelled to follow the wall
around: Broadway & Vesey,
Broadway & Fulton. In front of St.Paul’s
lighted candles, baseball caps,
teddy bears. A volunteer offers
a pen. I glance at
scrawl some words beneath
God Bless
but cannot write. The jagged pillars’
wreckage, random spars and rubble
will not cohere into anything
that can be said.
Once I stared, striving
for comprehension,
into the bomb bay
of the reconstructed
Enola Gay. But that was cleaner,
antiseptic. Here
smoke still
spirals
from the scorched
ground.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Valentina Gnup,
Originally from Santa Barbara and Orange County, CA, Ms. Gnup
now teaches writing at Greeensboro College,
Greensboro, N.C. (“After three years in Greensboro” she says, “I’m still
adjusting.”) She earned her MFA in poetry at
Ash
on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the
ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in
the air suspended
Marks the
place where a story ended.
—T.S. Eliot
I was one of the few who didn’t
participate.
Though we had a TV, my daughters
refused
to watch the
horror. And during those days,
I thought I was in love. I was
flying across
the country
every week, drunk on promise—
I could only embrace fair weather.
Now I watch reruns of steel
tapestries
crumbling, wingless
bodies plunging
through the sky;
I am too late to grieve.
The footage is spectacular—white
powder
rises like a
million carrion flowers,
small blossoms
that smell of decaying flesh.
Your hand grazes my breast when we
awaken.
Your touch is light, undemanding;
I slide backwards against you.
The room is too warm, but our
bodies,
a question
mark amid the sheets, stay
curled until the
sun leaves the windows.
Morning is already gone.
We’re trapped inside the distance
day requires.
Towers will fall again; next time
I will stop.
You read me a story from the
newspaper;
I can’t hear above the cicadas’
drone—
desperate insects
shriek from every tree.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
From Chickasaw
Plum editor John R.
Guthrie (with appreciation to first publisher Harvard Square Commentary).
Six Quatrains Recalling a Wound
A yellow cab, its turbaned driver
from
the
to
the voids, two
sepulchres. The voices of
the dead cry
out, their hands are supplicant.
The scribblings
on the framing of the fence:
“We love you all, and wish that
none of you
were gone.”
“Fire Fighter Paul De
where others
fled.” One scribble states, “life is
not always
fun. Signed, Gail.” I turn away,
my soul is
shrived, the mid-day streets now dark.
A bus arrives and shudders to a
stop
beside the
broken curb. The door gapes wide,
I climb aboard, not caring where
it goes,
and through
its windows see the flagellants,
the hawkers
in the deeply shadowed streets.
In carts and trays they hold their
souvenirs,
photos of hell.
Do they believe that I’d
forget? They
cry, “these valued splinters of
your one true
god was crucified, are yours,
four dollars
each.” The towers are no more.
and god is
gone, if he was ever here.
--John R.
Guthrie
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Philip Appleman, known as one of the
THIS YEAR'S LOVE POEM
They could
pump frenzy into air ducts
and rage into reservoirs,
dynamite dams
and drown the cities,
cry fire in theaters
as the victims are burning,
but
I will find my way through blackened streets
and kneel down at your side.
They could
jump the median, head-on,
and obliterate the future,
fit .45's to the hands of kids
and skate them off to school,
flip live butts into tinderbox forests
and hellfire half the heavens,
but
in the rubble of smoking cottages
I will hold you in my arms.
They could
send kidnappers to kindergartens
and pedophiles to playgrounds,
wrap themselves in Old Glory
and gut the Bill of Rights,
pound at the door with holy screed
and put an end to reason,
but
I will cut through their curtains of cunning
and find you somewhere in moonlight.
Whatever they do with their anthrax or chainsaws, however they strip-search or
brainwash or blackmail, they cannot prevent me from sending you robins,
all of them singing: I'll be there.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
NOTICE:
POET OF
NOTE MOLLY PEACOCK”S SHOW TO OPEN IN DC & NYC:
MOLLY PEACOCK’S one-woman show,
"The Shimmering Verge," produced by Femme Fatale Productions:
The
Molly Peacock, a
poet/writer/memoirist/actress of international renown, is the author of five
volumes of poetry is an engaging speaker. Her widely celebrated writing has appeared in numerous
internationally recognized publications ranging from The New Yorker to The Paris
Review.
The
Chickasaw
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