THE GREAT FIRE

by Rick Mullin

Trinity Church steeple in silhouette on 9-11-2001.

Trinity Church Cemetery, Manhattan

At lunch, they ask me where to find the grave
of Alexander Hamilton. “The other
side,” I tell them, pointing to the nave
and tower-shadowed trees. “I hate to bother
you...." Don’t tell me... Hamilton. The same.
Tomorrow I should think to bring a sign:
The Other Side of Trinity [an arrow
pointing right], and sit back from the line
of tourists searching wide-eyed on the narrow
paths between the headstones for a name
that Broadway brought to light outside the oldest
steeple on a precipice and port
of no return, September at its coldest
in a New York City of another sort,
more human-scale and redolent of flame.


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Transom.

DANIEL

by Carol Alexander

What we know of spirit and visible ink,
the human voice raised in remonstrance
against bloodshed and greed

we learned from you, and from your small birds
glimpsed at twilight,  and the ubiquitous coat
shrouding flesh against plague.

They are walking against this morning's rain,
and the habit of skirting the terrible questions
that imbue the bomb and splintered cross.

The fountain will not die with you
but frame its steeple with the greater strength
and yes, waters will upward rise

in the memory of you.

Carol Alexander's poems have appeared in such journals as Bluestem, Caesura, Canary, The Common, Chiron Review, Illya's Honey, Mad Hatter's Review, Mobius, TheNewVerse.News, Poetry Quarterly, Poetrybay, Red River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Sugar Mule, THEMA and Zymbol, as well as in various anthologies including Through a Distant Lens (WriteWing Publishing) for which she received the award for best poem, and Proud to Be, for which she was a poetry finalist. Alexander's chapbook, Bridal Veil Falls, was published by Flutter Press (2013).  Recent work appears in Split Rock Review and Clementine Poetry Journal.