my family lived there before it was Maine
before this was a even a country

they still live there so we visit
we fly in and out of the Jetport

we place our shoes in a tray
empty our pockets on the way home out west

the guy asked which one of us was Grace
I pointed to the infant perched on my arm

she was selected for
enhanced security screening

it’s possible that happened in the same tunnel of air
the hijackers passed through

the imaginary tube
the human-shaped ribbon through time

the permanent trace of their movement through space
I could see it all at once

we have repeatedly walked in
the steps of those men

the hotel manager where they stayed
had a nervous breakdown

I flew over the Pentagon and Manhattan
one year afterward

other deployments far away
that all blend together

we drove by that hotel again
as we left Maine this summer

we take off our shoes
in a new part of the terminal

and our departure gate is always next
to the old closed security line

little kids run around under a big toy airplane
that hangs over that spot now

a child-sized control tower and terminal building
instead of x-ray machines

we wait to go home
and I always look over

at the playground
in the path of destruction

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Eric Chandler

Eric Chandler is the author of Kekekabic (Finishing Line Press, 2022) and Hugging This Rock (Middle West Press, 2017). His writing has appeared in Northern Wilds, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Talking Stick, Sleet Magazine, O-Dark-Thirty, Line of Advance, Collateral, The Deadly Writers Patrol, PANK, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Consequence Magazine, and Columbia Journal. Chandler was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014 for creative nonfiction. He’s a three-time winner of the Col. Darron L. Wright Award for poetry. Chandler is also a US Air Force veteran of both the active duty and the Minnesota Air National Guard. He flew 145 combat missions and over 3000 hours in the F-16. He’s happiest when he’s on a trail in Duluth with his wife, two children, and faithful dog, Leo.

1 Comment

Liam says:

March 17, 2019 at 10:24 am

I don’t know why it took me so long to read this. I thought I had, but just the first few lines on twitter, maybe. The last lines, though–the playground in the path of our destruction–really express the sort of childhood in the world that marks American innocence and belligerence. I love the juxtaposition of playground and destruction as a way of marking how the past will again be the future. The expulsive alliteration of the Ps also works for me.