"Aren't Us"
September 11th, 2001 has been on my mind lately. I just enrolled in a new drawing class, and so I have been looking through some of my drawing/painting exercises from past art classes, and I came upon pieces I had done in 2001, months before the horrible event. Looking at those dates—May 2001, August 2001—I could not imagine what it felt like to not know what I was about to know.
And the other day, in looking through an old textbook, searching for teaching ideas, I came upon a poem I had never read before:
“September Twelfth, 2001”
by X.J. Kennedy
Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,
Aren’t us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.
Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.
Comments
Yes! That same line break stunned me, too. It speaks so simply to something unspeakable, you know?
Jan 22 July 08
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That line break, between first and second stanza, is stunning. Heart-sinking.
This is a new poem for me. It brings back, suddenly, all the time spend studying images in the NYT, after Sept. 11, 2001.
Jane Kokernak 18 July 08