2 Poems from THIS NEUTRAL AIR: 9/11 What needs to be said

Cover: Painting by Scott Martin, “Untitled,” 2001, acrylic on masonite

In 2003, Raven Chronicles Published A Raven Special Issue, Volume 10, No. 4, edited by Darren Higgens, This Neutral Air, 9/11: What needs to be said. These are 2 poems from that magazine.

At the Reading

by Robert Gregory

              While he stood at the gleaming podium
in front of the two brand-new windows
in the unmarked room with its mild
smooth carpet and ranks of identical chairs
speaking slowly and gravely about the loneliness
of his childhood, big ragged flakes of snow,
some of them joined as if holding hands,
began to race past the windows behind him
horizontally, just a few fragments at first
and then many thousands. Some in his audience
saw the snow going past (pretty); some
saw small gleeful beings rushing by, their freedom
to fly a cheerful mockery of the speaker
and his gravity, and his motionless audience as well,
and the words that moved so slowly and carefully
out of him and disappeared into the space
of the room; some saw a reminder of the things
that can happen: something solid and permanent
just up the street disintegrates in distance and silence,
and a roaring wind from the unheard blast comes
running past us with the ragged torn fragments
of paper and skin, some of them still joined, racing them away
to scatter them so that although lonely and broken
and gone forever they will be everywhere and anything now

Terror

by Anna Bálint

Outside, the plumes of smoke,
the heat of the fireball,
have subsided.
Now the air is ash.
Now there is stillness.
Never before have I known such quiet.
Never before have I lain so still.

This morning, early,
while the children slept,
I readied for the day.
I washed and dressed.
I brushed my hair.
I heated water for tea.
Later I called the children awake
and the little one yawned,
her pink mouth wide.

Now my children’s faces
float inside my mind
like dust in sunlight.
Here, beneath the rubble
there is no sun, only dust.
If there is a difference
between death
and awaiting rescue
I do not know it.

I heard the plane.
First the drone
and then the roar of it,
the rest a confusion.
Sudden heat and screams,
a rush of fire, black smoke,
fire and smoke
rushing into my lungs
as everything
everything
gave way: no floor,
no walls, no doors,
just falling,
endlessly falling,
everything red,
the red of fire,
the red of my own blood,
my heart and lungs exploding,
a terrible snapping
and cracking of bones,
my bones, and the bones
of this building.
And then the silence.

There came a moment,
lying here so still,
when I imagined I heard a sound.
I imagined I heard the voices
of my rescuers. They came 
with shovels and bravery
and picked through rubble.
They shouted my name.
Later I imagined I heard
my children crying their desolation.
There was nothing of me left
to answer them.

I do not know
whether this is the the same day
of the morning my children set out,
the oldest holding tight
the hand of the youngest,
sunlight warm upon their faces
as they turned to wave to me.
I do not know
whether this is that same day,
or the night of that day,
or another day or night entirely.
I do not know.

I do not know
the men who did this thing,
or their morning thoughts
as they shaved or combed
their beards, or whether
they dressed in fresh shirts
in readiness of this day.
I do not know
the color of their eyes,
or what light they held.

Outside, the plumes of smoke,
the heat of the fireball, 
have subsided.
Now it rains dust,
the air is ash,
and my children are shadows.
Now my scorched skin
drifts over the city like feathers.

I am thirty years old
and the mother of three.
This morning 
American bombs fell on my city.
I live in Hiroshima, Japan.
I live in Baghdad. I live in Beirut.
I heard the planes coming.
I live in a village in Vietnam.
I live on the West Bank.
I live in the highlands of Guatemala.
The soldiers who came to my village
carried American guns.
I live on the Oklahoma Plains,
I journeyed here along the Trail of Tears.
I live in New York. I arrived by slave ship.
I live in Afghanistan.
I am thirty years old,
I pray facing east,
I fear for my children.

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Robert Gregory (1947-2018) was an Omaha native, a Marine Corps veteran, a UC Irvine-trained deconstructionist, a musician who played the guitar and mandolin in several bands, one of them called New Standard Rain, a “semi-bluegrass band” (his description). He was the author of numerous books of poetry, including Interferences (1987), Boy Picked Up By The Wind (1992), The Skinny Man (2003), The Beautiful City of Weeds (2005), and You Won’t Need That (2013). Madeline DeFrees said of the poems collected in Boy Picked Up By the Wind, winner of the Bluestem Poetry Award: “Here is a sensibility so limber that it requires the reader to reinvent imagination.”

Anna Bálint Anna Bálint is a London-born, Seattle-based poet, writer, editor and teacher of East European descent. Her most recent editorial work is the anthology Take a Stand, Art Against Hate (Raven Chronicles Press, 2020). Her story collection Horse Thief (Curbstone Press, 2004), was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. Two earlier books of poetry were Out of the Box and spread them crimson sleeves like wings. An alumna of Hedgebrook’s Writers in Residence Program and the Jack Straw Writers Program, Anna has also taught creative writing for many years and in many places, including Washington State Prisons, El Centro de la Raza, Writers in the Schools, Antioch University, Richard Hugo House, and Path with Art (all in Seattle). In 2001, she received a Leading Voice Award in recognition of her creative work with urban and immigrant youth at El Centro de la Raza. Currently she is a teaching artist at Recovery Café where, in 2012, she founded Safe Place Writing Circle for people in recovery from trauma, addiction, mental illness, and homelessness.