Missing AA Flight 11 on 9/11
For want of a nail . . . the rider was lost. –from a 13th century proverb.
What if I had not forgotten the pectin?
What if the beach plum jam had jelled in time
for me to box up the twelve jars the day before
my flight out of Logan? I’d have mailed the jam
—August conserved in amber syrup perfection—
back home as planned. I would not have paid
the modest fee to delay my return, nor begun
the canning again. I’d have gone to the airport,
still believing that summer intact and secure
in its sealed jars would land on my porch
after my own return. There’d have been no return
then: no divine dispensation, no lost lynchpin
reversing the chain of causation so that this time
the rider was saved—I’d have made that plane.
To the Sonnet
I want to kiss you deeply on the mouth,
son of Orpheus, even as one hand
twists my knife in your soft parts below
and the other finds the rock to bash in
your brains. I want to know what remains
after you’re torn trunk from limb, octets
and sestets subsumed in a great humming
chant of feminine rhyme, or no rhyme.
I want to deconstruct space and time
within your strict frame—and also, you.
While your head floats downriver, is it true
you’ll continue to sing? I’d like that, each rag
of flesh blooming its own red mouth, your lyre
wind-strummed—at last—into telling the truth.