Tag Archives: 9/11

A Poem For 9/11: Shanksville

This being the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our country of Sept. 11, 2001, I’m publishing a poem written about the day by my father, who is professor emeritus of comparative literature from Claremont McKenna College.

Shanksville

By Ricardo Quinones

Whatever it was,
Needing a companion at 40,000 feet,
The accumulating spotty clouds
Suggesting the beetle bush wildness
That overhung his eyes;
The patches of ground below
That resembled the  splotches
Of his nearing-ninety skin,
Or the flight path itself
Southeast of Pittsburgh,
Some twenty minutes from  D.C.
Placing us directly over Shanksville,
The last great chapter of American democracy.
All conspired to bring  to mind
The presence that they required.
And so I said to the  presiding form
The poetic father of us all
“Kitty Hawk, Kitty Hawk,”
And he, pleased by the recollection,
Replied, “Shanksville, a name quite different,
Like many along these rural roads,
But what’s in a name?
What matters  are the revelations they contain.”
Out of the depths of the American past,
He established the tableau of vision
That would govern our conversation.
*
The Wright brothers had it all,
The turn-of-the-century
Tinkerer’s genius of invention
Coupled with the thirst for competition.
The French were dogging their tails.
But they were masters of locomotion
And at Kitty Hawk
Were the first to lift a powered device
Weighing more than air
Twenty feet off the ground for twenty seconds
A distance of 120 feet.
To the derision and abuse
Their claims elicited
Galileo’s defense was ready for use,
Eppure si muove,” nevertheless it flew.
The French with justice in their hearts
Were brought to admit and apologize
For discrediting this first adventure into space
That in more than a half -century’s time
Would send a human to stroll on the moon. Continue reading

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On 9/11

On September 11, 2001, I was living in Mexico City, preparing to go on a trip with a driver from a Mexico City mortuary. I was working in the capital at the time as a freelance writer.IMG_9349

Part of the mortuary’s business was to pick up the bodies of immigrants who had died in the United States and whose families had flown them home to be buried.

The mortuary would provide the service of retrieving the body and driving it back to the immigrant’s home village. That morning the body of an immigrant was due to arrive from Denver.

I was set to go with the driver to the airport and then to the village.

I called the mortuary and the owner told me, “There are no flights today. I think someone just bombed your country.”

I spent the next two weeks in front of a television.

 

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9/11 REMEMBRANCE: Rivera, Ramirez, Cardenaz — RIP

On the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I thought it appropriate to list some of the obituaries of soldiers who’ve died in the wars that grew from the event.

Most recently, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl Richard A. Rivera, Jr., of Oxnard, was killed in Afghanistan in a green-on-blue attack.

Another story I’ll never forget is of Lance Cpl Rogelio Ramirez, from Pasadena, who spent three years trying to get into the Marines, then was killed less than two months into his deployment in Iraq. Amazing, the story his mother told of how hard he tried, and the things he did, to be acceptable to the Marine Corps.

Sgt. Michael Cardenaz, of Corona, was an enlistee planning on making the Army a career. A larger-than-life guy to the folks who knew him.

Powerful, emotional things, these stories.

A thank you to these guys and condolences to their families.

 

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