A Week After 9/11
and we still needed all the things
people who just bought a house need,
and on our way to buy them at Walmart,
I remembered the chain email forwarded
to me at least 5 times, telling me that tonight
how we were all going to go outside and hold up
a lit candle, a sign of hope and unity, and if the people
who did this to us could see hundreds of millions of people
holding candles, then they would learn
they could never win.
I remembered because I saw a pre-teen girl
in nü metal style black hoodie, black lipstick
sitting on the curb across from a condemned house
on Greenfield Ave. by herself holding an unlit candle.
Passed dozens of houses that night,
glow of TV through the windows, blocks of empty
neighborhood streets to Walmart,
and the same empty streets back.
She was still sitting there by herself on the curb,
still trying to believe in something.
Matthew Ussia is director of Duquesne University’s First Year Writing Program in spite of the fact that he got a C- in freshman writing and was rejected from Duquesne’s MA program. He is also an editor, scholar, podcaster, post-doom thereminist, and softcore punk. His first book, The Red Glass Cat, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. His second book, Saturday Night on Earth, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2025. www.matthewussia.com.
