Seven years ago I was voting in a primary election for New York City's mayor. I lived in Soho at the time, with the Twin Towers in full view (just 2 miles to the south, looming up high in the sky).
Over the conversation I was having with one of the poll workers on Sullivan Street, I heard what I thought was a military jet flying overhead (because it was so loud), then a metallic thud like the sound a garbage truck makes.
Suddenly I was on the set of a Hollywood disaster movie, people in unison staring upwards at the same spot, saying "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." A woman in a bathrobe and bare feet stumbling out of her building to with her professional photography equipment to take pictures. Everyone horrified at the sight of a smoking hole in one of the Trade Towers against a perfect blue sky.
Surreal.
We didn't know then that there would be a second plane within the hour. What a second plane would signify. What would follow.
I watched my city live in fear and pain and economic uncertainty for months. I learned how powerful people can manipulate others, their grief and fear, for their own political ends, without ethics or shame, as New York was used as a prop for people peddling more pain and loss, but on the people of Iraq.
Barack Obama and John McCain are going to be literally across the street from me tonight, speaking at Columbia University this evening on service.
I won't be seeing them. It's difficult to get tickets. But it also means something to me to allow this to be just another day. People who righteously declare "Never Forget!" don't understand how important it became to us New Yorkers to forget. To forget the visceral details of that day and the months that followed. To move on. To heal.
In the meantime, it is still a day we remember the pain and complexity of it all. In that spirit, I share a poem I wrote 18 months after hearing the first plane hit. What I had learned about loss since then, that it is important to remember, then move on.
Peace be on us.
Peace be on Afghanistan.
Peace be on Iraq.
Peace be on those you love.
Peace be on those you hate.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Journeys
I.
blue in my eyes
and sun on my skin
and eighty-eight floors up
a perfect hole
scissored through,
smoke spills out, splits time
in two
eight-eight floors up
angels in white shirts
stretch out their arms
signal us their names
hoping to fly home
II.
and later
I fly south
to talk to my mother
who has lost her voice,
her libraries burned.
She has eaten my keys.
She is barely there, barely beating the air
through her lungs, her heart
and my face
through her mind
I say to her
are you happy to see me?
and she looks at me
as if she wants to say something.
III.
a Kandahar wedding
misfortune rains down
in silver bullets
on dry earth
IV.
A man walks into a bar and thinks God is tapping his shoulder.
He buys himself a drink and wages war on two continents
V.
In the desert
plants pirouette open slowly
even as time is stolen from the clock.
Farther north, in Kirkuk,
children write their names in the sand.
will we recognize our own faces in the mirror?
the epic of gilgamesh is missing
VI.
In my father’s country
I locate my dreams
and write them down.