<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p class="MsoNormal"> Nine-Eleven: In Memoriam</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal">I’ll never know what spirit</p><p class="MsoNormal">grabbed my hand at seven a.m.,</p><p class="MsoNormal">made me pick up the remote.</p><p class="MsoNormal">a thing I rarely do.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Dressing for work I caught it</p><p class="MsoNormal">from the corner of one eye</p><p class="MsoNormal">heard the eerie silence of the smoke</p><p class="MsoNormal">watched the absurd ballet of the debris cloud </p><p class="MsoNormal">the buildings crumbling like felled dancers</p><p class="MsoNormal">all fall down.</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal">At school I was the messenger from Hell.</p><p class="MsoNormal">We huddled on the playground</p><p class="MsoNormal">disbelief excised our tongues</p><p class="MsoNormal">arms wrapped around the children</p><p class="MsoNormal">binding them to our hips.</p><p class="MsoNormal">We knew we had to usher them inside</p><p class="MsoNormal">pretend it was just another day.</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal">Bush ordered orange alerts</p><p class="MsoNormal">my students had to cut a swath around the gym</p><p class="MsoNormal">to use the bathrooms. I sent them in pairs &</p><p class="MsoNormal">held my breath through the difficult questions.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i class="">The people who did this can’t find us</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">I told them. <i class="">Our town’s too small. They don’t know we exist</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal">It was partly true and they wanted to believe.</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal">But what would <i class="">we</i> believe</p><p class="MsoNormal">the world ripped forever from its axis</p><p class="MsoNormal">a cardboard globe gone belly-up</p><p class="MsoNormal">the dead goldfish of Antarctica floating on the top,</p><p class="MsoNormal">Alaska on the bottom</p><p class="MsoNormal">nothing in its rightful place?</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal">For weeks </p><p class="MsoNormal">the vampire news could not resist</p><p class="MsoNormal">the cruel replay </p><p class="MsoNormal">the towers imploding over and over behind our eyes</p><p class="MsoNormal">as if by keeping the images alive we could stop time </p><p class="MsoNormal">rewind </p><p class="MsoNormal">go back </p><p class="MsoNormal">unthink the unthinkable. </p><div class=""> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Sande Anfang</div></body></html>