Chappaquiddick

giddy
with two gin & tonics
mary jo
reluctantly
moves behind the wheel
on this lonely
humid
moonless
night

she squirms
in the unadjusted seat
squinting
at the insects zooming
in the headlights' glare

putting the car
in drive
her twenty-second ride
begins in panic
hurtling down a
dirt road
littered with ruts
her right foot straining
to reach the gas pedal

she approaches the
rickety bridge
but its flat
anonymity
makes no impression
as she proceeds
forward and
down
into the swift current
the tidal splash of
two tons of metal
unheard
unseen

unaware
the nervous senator
walks toward the cottage
wondering if mary jo
will find her way back

he suddenly remembers that
a man will soon step
on the moon
but his thoughts
are diverted
by the fragile sound
of girlish chatter
rising from the clammy darkness
like an aria
or an omen

The Man From Nine-Eleven

...he steps out of a cab
as a jet
surrealistically
glides
slow motion-like
into one of the towers

he doesn't see it happen
he hears it happen:
          the explosive sound reverberating
          through the silvery upward space

          and then the awful silence descending,
          hanging over the street,
          an ominous existential moment
          in which time and memory are stilled

he begins to run away...

minutes later he hears
a second plane
slam into the other tower

he's surrounded by people running, shrieking,
a galloping mass of figures racing
against a strange backdrop, a tsunami of
rolling undulating smoke
pouring from the towers

          he stops in the middle of the street,
          a man alone,
          a historical ant,
          caught up in a cataclysm

there were those who knew
he had an appointment
this very morning in the towers,
a morning that was now an apocalypse,
a time when a massive number of people
would be confronted with a fiery demise,
annihilated,
their dna destroyed,
identity obliterated,
flesh and bone reduced to ash

this was his day of transformation...
money could fix his destiny,
a perfect time when identity could be
so easily purchased, reinvented, altered...

he would start over: a new name, a new face, a new life,
he would run, flee, escape without regret,
without a trace,
racing ruthlessly, breathlessly
on a path
to his own resurrection...

Vernon Waring's poetry has appeared in The Writer, The Iconoclast, Alabama School of Fine Arts Quarterly, Midwestern University Quarterly, New Dimensions, and Anthology as well as on the Prairie Home Companion's Web site. His light verse has been published in the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia Daily News, and WRITE ON!! Poetry Magazette. His short fiction and poetry have also been featured online in Ascent Aspirations Magazine. He resides in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Email: Vernon Waring

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