Oh Nine Eleven Oh One
"The great social adventure of America is no longer
the conquest of the wilderness, but the absorption
of fifty different peoples."
- Walter Lippmann, 1913
Another one pm
I litter my brain with
diet cola Bach reports
of fuel firearms flag sales
on the rise
the stock market
plummeting like people
did in replays
I'm an exclamation point
leaning against Rayno's headstone
you'd need satellite data
to get a glimpse of me
I deliberate family photos
dancing like butterflies
while the people in them
incinerated
over lower Manhattan
It's hypnotic
beneath the hushed
air space and borders
sealing like Tupperware
I shed moist stanzas
for Bartholdi's sculpture
who is weeping still
into a
blank anthology of ocean
© November 2001 Shelly Reed
