For half an hour now we’ve had a plane under our feet
Still no evacuation
We are metal shrieking
People hanging out the windows
People falling from the windows
An abandoned wheelchair
Brokers’ offices but no brokers
A stapler forgotten on a photocopier
Filling cabinets overturned with the files still filed
A diary full of urgent appointments
A weather forecast predicting clear skies and a high of 79° F this morning
All the windows blown out
Blazing fuel in the elevator shafts
Ninety-eight elevators, all out of order
White marble in the open spaces stained with blood
Two corridors lit with small halogens like dotted lines in the ceiling
Ocher flames with blue curls of smoke
Scraps of paper dancing in the air like the Fourth of July
The trash of the peoples of the whole world
United Colors of Babel
Hands in tatters
skin hanging from arms
like an Issey Miyake dress
Pretty women weeping
Pieces of fuselage on the escalators
Pretty women coughing
No contact with the outside world
Plates and cups, white and blue, in pieces
Everything is hazy dusty dead filthy
Carved-up faces by the coffee machine
A closed space with a fire down below
We roast
We are being roasted like chickens
Smoked like salmon
Alarms full tilt
Dust in the wind
All we are is
Dust in the wind
In the heat, the figurative paintings melt
And become abstracts
A rain of bodies over the WTC Plaza.