"Ash Tattoos"

My newest e-book of poetry about the 9/11 tragedies and the aftermath of war is 82 pages and arranged chronologically, beginning with day the planes struck the towers in New York City. Some of the poetry has been previously published in journals such as The American Muse, The Pedestal Magazine, Pierian Springs, Slow Trains, and Thunder Sandwich; others are available only in this collection.

Like everyone else in the world, I went through shock, disbelief, rage, and horror. I turned to the page to process this juggernaut of emotion and find hope amidst the rubble and sorrow. Ash Tattoos examines our grief, our heroes, our foibles, and our shock, as well as work which addresses the plight of women and children in Afghanistan, complimented by some very poignant illustrations and photographs.

If you are still struggling to cope with the attacks and the aftermath of war as well, perhaps you'll find some of the text useful in that process. Ash Tattoos sells for 69 cents, just about as close to "free" as we could get, since the purpose of the poets on the site is to step up the dialogue between writer and reader. A sample from Ash Tattoos is posted below.

Blood Inside the Cameo

"One body was carried out wrapped in an American Flag."

The Associated Press: September 13, 2001

30,000 tons of rubble
slip inside our history books.
Pharaohs must be moaning
in their dusty bins.
Numbers of the missing climb.
Splayed girders pecked by hunting dogs
searching answers lurking
in their unmet ghosts.
A plane's black box
a camera and a shutter's click
cannot revive as muscled steel.
Concrete fizzles into sand.
I light a candle at my desk,
copy/paste a fitful prayer --
a tub of thinning Vaseline
running margins awkwardly
as if the shoes I wear don't fit.

Somewhere husbands, somewhere wives,
somewhere daughters, somewhere sons
are puking guts and coughing into tattered sleeves.
Cocoons of home and hearth are gone,
reduced to flooded photograph.
A clothing store becomes a morgue.
Receives a stream of limb remains.
When will all this bleeding stop?
Stomachs growl for justice meat.
Our Sunday ties are choking us
with threads of fallen Jerichos.
Freedom's bell is coated
in the rust of death.
Money's tiny paper clip
and bags of blood
and tears of grieving acetone
must raise the stars and stripes again.