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I. The Quick

The strangest thing

is how it didn't touch me.

I was on the subway the whole time

later I had to make the xerox guy,

who has a heavy accent, repeat it three times.

Airplanes downtown. Terrorism. Who

could believe it? When I went outside

the cloud of smoke was visible

from halfway up the island. That night

I walked the three blocks to the pub.

My friends were safe. I was safe. I bought

myself a beer and drank it, eyes attached

to CNN behind the bar, watching the bodies fall

in slow motion on repeat and when I was done

some guy across the room

had sent me a drink. In the dark and haze

I couldn't even see what he looked like really

but I already knew I wanted him to come and kiss me,

kiss me like tomorrow is something that happens only

to other people.

II. Picture Post

Hector Fernando, whose pictures

have been hanging at the exit

of the B train at 42nd Street for the past three weeks

(a chubby, smiling guy, no clue how tall he is

the poster doesn't give his vitals, just two shots

redundantly identified, since after seeing the portrait

there's no way we could miss Hector, moon-cheeked

and melon-browed in the middle

of the bottom photo, the one with the carnation in his jacket

for the wedding of his brother or his friend)

is, as far as I know, still missing.

III. Father Judge

It turns out that the priest - the papers

seldom mentioned this - was queer. Jimmy,

one night at dinner twelve days later,

takes a sip of Coke and says "Oh yes, Mike Judge,

he buried half of gay New York."

At the height of the epidemic, his address book

like everyone else's too painful to open

anymore, he would have felt

like God's angel. Exodus doesn't say

what that one thought, passing over some houses

and through others

what he had to live with when it was done

Father Judge learned

an affinity for death, gave the last blessing

to God knows how many, watched

the other half of gay New York flinch

when he approached their boyfriends' beds

The Reverend Mychal Judge was never

going to get a Roman commendation

for burying the queers, so let's be glad

he died a hero, died just like he lived

opening the gate to any wandering soul

that happened to ask of him the way to home.

IV. Post-Traumatic Stress

At eleven days and counting

a stewardess hauling her bag through Times Square

stops to look up, look around, making sure

that everything is still here

when she's seen it she puts her head back down

and punches through the crowd

We're looking up a lot these days, raking through the shreds

of late-September cloud to see if the sky

has fallen in, if the jet fuel

accelerating once again above our heads has yet

succeeded in bringing the whole thing down

so far so good

the homeless woman on my path to the subway

from work is still here. She has the same name

as my mother, and I've never given her anything

bolting in guilt at the sight of her sign: "Hello, my name is...."

yeah, Linda

is still here

I know because I check for her

twice every day; three days ago

she moved around the corner

until I saw her bent grey head

I felt my heart clench in my chest

as if somehow losing one more piece

of the city

could tip everything over the edge

V. The Dead

What you're never going to understand unless you live here

anyway is that New York is a city of diminutives

which subdivides and isolates to manageable

amounts its staggered sprawl

This is why afterwards

every block has its own memorial

miniature cities of wax skyscrapers

we recreate

with pillar candles

the moonscapes of the dead, buried

below Canal under towers

of melted metal

which cracked and bowed and cratered

and finally collapsed. The trees

down there are trimmed with crumpled papers

it's an early and grey Christmas in Manhattan:

snowy ash, and epiphany,

and candles, and silence, and then song.