NC Poets on 9/11: Two poems from Allison Hedge Coke

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s authored books include American Book Award winner Dog Road Woman and Off-Season City Pipe (poetry); Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer, a memoir; and Blood Run, a verse-play. Hedge Coke has edited eight additional collections, including Sing: Poetry of the Indigenous Americas and Effigies. She has cropped tobacco, worked fields, waters and worked in factories in N.C. Her family is from Deep Creek and Pumpkintown.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

The radio show played out
each stunned disbelief, each
leap like leaves leave fall
until it was done, vapor vile
with death, and we realized
what we’d sown, what have
and have nots play out on
flower deliverers, clerks,
secretaries, working stiffs,
in our dawning time.

SEPTEMBER STORY

So my sister,
she works down on Water,
got off her printing shift ‘bout
the time things came down.
All the hustle, she thought
was a bus wreck. Kept going,
stayed out of their way, eyes

down, way to make it in the city, right?

By the time she got a call through

to me, they were looking for her

from work, wondering if she’d

made it off the subway before

the whole thing buckled down

Few days later, she was wiping

dust from the windowsill, when

it dawned on her it was ash, remains

cremains, probably. Huddled there
after flying out of towers, now blown.

One Response to “NC Poets on 9/11: Two poems from Allison Hedge Coke”

1. Brenda Johnson says:

   October 5, 2011 at 9:48 am

   Oh, my! I had not thought about the “cremains”

   If I had, I would have saved them.

   Thanks for sharing this thought

   Reply