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September 11 by Joseph Fasano
September 11
by Joseph Fasano
They woke not knowing.
They kissed their children goodbye
in the morning dark, left a note
under the roses on the table.
(I’m sorry. We’ll talk about it later.)
Say it: They did not know
they would hold hands with strangers
and have to choose nothing over fire.
They did not know they would have
no other winters.
Listen. History
is human hands, a strand of hair
still stuck in someone’s buttons,
and absence makes a life
undone with hungers:
When my friend heard her father
was among the dead, she spent all autumn
dialing Fire and Rescue:
Are you living? she asked them.
Can you love? Can you still sing?
(These were the days of older phones
and you had to cradle the receiver
as though you were cradling a tiny
child, full of the silences
that made you.)
Please, they told her. You must only
use this number
if this is an actual emergency.
Silence. A long breath of silence.
And then my friend
would answer (she, too,
is history; she, too,
is the wind now), It is. It is. It is.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe
Editorial Note by Max Wallis
The last of Joseph Fasano’s quartet of poems sidesteps spectacle entirely, choosing instead to inhabit those quiet gestures around us. The note beneath the roses, the receiver held like a child. What’s offered is not a history lesson, but a human one: absence rendered through objects, through voice, through the unbearable delay of knowing.
What moves me most is the refusal to flinch from hope. Even as the poem recognises the impossibility of return, it honours the compulsion to ask: Are you living? Can you love? Can you still sing? These are not questions seeking answers. They’re incantations against being forgotten, against erasure, against redaction.
There’s a gentleness here, but also a kind of insistence. That grief lingers. That history is made not just in impact, but in what’s left unsaid. The poem ends not with closure, but with echo: It is. It is. It is. That repetition undoes me. It doesn’t explain what happened. It simply affirms that it did.
I think a lot of readers will know a thing or two about that.
All the best
Max
PS…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe
View all episodes
By Max Wallis' Daily Aftershock Writing Prompts (The Aftershock Review)September 11
by Joseph Fasano
They woke not knowing.
They kissed their children goodbye
in the morning dark, left a note
under the roses on the table.
(I’m sorry. We’ll talk about it later.)
Say it: They did not know
they would hold hands with strangers
and have to choose nothing over fire.
They did not know they would have
no other winters.
Listen. History
is human hands, a strand of hair
still stuck in someone’s buttons,
and absence makes a life
undone with hungers:
When my friend heard her father
was among the dead, she spent all autumn
dialing Fire and Rescue:
Are you living? she asked them.
Can you love? Can you still sing?
(These were the days of older phones
and you had to cradle the receiver
as though you were cradling a tiny
child, full of the silences
that made you.)
Please, they told her. You must only
use this number
if this is an actual emergency.
Silence. A long breath of silence.
And then my friend
would answer (she, too,
is history; she, too,
is the wind now), It is. It is. It is.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe
Editorial Note by Max Wallis
The last of Joseph Fasano’s quartet of poems sidesteps spectacle entirely, choosing instead to inhabit those quiet gestures around us. The note beneath the roses, the receiver held like a child. What’s offered is not a history lesson, but a human one: absence rendered through objects, through voice, through the unbearable delay of knowing.
What moves me most is the refusal to flinch from hope. Even as the poem recognises the impossibility of return, it honours the compulsion to ask: Are you living? Can you love? Can you still sing? These are not questions seeking answers. They’re incantations against being forgotten, against erasure, against redaction.
There’s a gentleness here, but also a kind of insistence. That grief lingers. That history is made not just in impact, but in what’s left unsaid. The poem ends not with closure, but with echo: It is. It is. It is. That repetition undoes me. It doesn’t explain what happened. It simply affirms that it did.
I think a lot of readers will know a thing or two about that.
All the best
Max
PS…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe