Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Poets and Poems: Grace Schulman’s “Without a Claim”


For a time I worked on my own, in a small office in the downtown section of our St. Louis suburb (pop. 27,154). I was a short half block to our train station, a block from the farmer’s market, next door to the bakery. I was on the first-floor of a two-story building (we call that a skyscraper here), sandwiched between a seamstress’s shop and a hair salon. Most days, my spaniel joined me, sleeping somewhere near my feet.

One morning, I turned on my computer and pulled up AOL (this was years before social media). And the first thing I saw was smoke pouring from one the towers of the World Trade Center. I flipped on my portable television, and watched a plane hit the second tower.

The Amtrak station was still a half a block away. The farmers market was opening up. I could still smell the leftover fragrance of doughnuts frying at the bakery. The hair stylist had just welcomed her first customer of the day, and the seamstress was working on adjusting a party dress. The dog was still asleep at my feet.

I wasn’t sure whether my immediate environment or the scenes on the television were the more unreal.

Can poets and poems make sense of something like this?

 To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.


Photograph by Jaime Jaime Junior via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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