In Memory of 9/11 ... 25 Years

Today is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. I've written a poem as a memorial to the 2,977 victims who died in the World Trade Center's destruction that day. May they rest in peace. Clement Twenty-five years ago, today, we were having clement weather, nice temps, not too hot, not too cold, pleasant, sunny. I was getting ready to go to work, and on the TV in the background came the news: a plane had hit a World Trade Center tower. I assumed, horrible as that was, it must be just an accident, but then a second airliner hit the other tower. You know how it went. I don’t know what the weather was in NYC that day, probably just as clement as here, but in the weirdest way it turned inclement, with smoke blotting out the sky, fire, clouds of ash covering blocks. Almost 3000 people perished that day. All of those names were read out loud today, under a clement sky. Again. The dead in large pictures behind the ceremonial readers. Wherever you are, keep in mind that, no matter how clement your day, it’s inclement somewhere, sometimes in an awful past. Inclement in the worst ways. But my cousin Joy was on her way to work at the WTC that day, and she got a text, “Go back home. It’s bad,” from her husband. She turned around. Now she’s 25 years older, alive. One happy ending. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Last night, there was a drone show in New York, titled "2,977 Lights Over New York Harbor," which featured 2,977 lights, one for each person killed in the 9/11 attacks. They formed a facsimile of the World Trade Center's twin towers. Here's a news photo of that part of the show. About the poem ... these are heroic couplets, iambic pentameter in rhymed pairs of lines. The iambic pentameter is rough, intentionally so, and the rhymes are frequently slant. I hope this gives the language the feel of spoken lingo. This is poem #238 in the 2026 Stafford Challenge (poem #603 in the one-and-a-third years I've participated in the Challenge). I've been recently writing poems about weather words, like petrichor, virga, and haboob. This is the 5th poem in this series. Sorry I've been lax about blogging. Before the NaPoWriMo/PAD posts, I was blogging about my activities as Poet Laureate of Iowa. I will get back to that soon. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

 

Thanks / May the Fourth Be with You

Friends, a belated thank-you here. Many thanks to my poet buddy and blogger fellow Thomas Alan Holmes, for writing April poems with me all last month. You rock, dude. (Sorry this is so late. My partner Renee was in the hospital from Tuesday through Sunday (yesterday) and so I was distracted.) Everyone, if you're a Star Wars fan, you know that the 4th of May is a fun day because "May the Fourth be with you" is a pun on "May the Force be with you," a classic greeting in-universe. Here's a little poem connected to my Rod Con appearance recently. (Rod Con is an annual comic-con at Rod Library on the University of Northern Iowa campus, where I gave a reading from my book Dragons & Rayguns last month.) May the Fourth Be with You             —tanaga Three weeks ago at a Con Renee and I dressed as Han Solo and Tsuru, from One Piece. Ang araw at buwan. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Renee and I at Rod Con (April 2026) The tanaga is an ancient Filipino poetic form (7-7-7-7 syllables, rhymed AAAA, traditionally untitled but sometimes titled now). The Tagalog phrase in the poem is "The sun and the moon." I'm of Filipino ancestry so I was glad to learn of this form recently. It's a very small space to work in, especially because of the monorhyme. I wrote this poem as part of the Stafford Challenge, where hundreds of poets across the world are writing a poem a day. Today is day 108, so my 108th poem this year. This is my second time doing the challenge, so counting the poems from last year, this is poem #473. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Day 30 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 104

Greetings, everyone, for our last day in April! My poem today is #104 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #469, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count). Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a harvest poem.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: a “poem that discusses a real or mythical being or profession (demons, firefighters, demonic firefighters) with [a] musing yet dispassionate tone." Combining both prompts successfully for the last time. Thank goodness I was able to complete the whole month combining all the prompts. Philippine Flying Dragons             —curtal sonnet Draco volans — famous flying dragons of Mindanao soar from tree to tree like nine-inch-long miniature pterodactyls. Male dragon flies down to a tree trunk and waits there for a line of red ants, then strikes! Harvest of insects, a nearby anthill’s bounty. Female dragon descends to earth and excavates a hole with her head like a shovel, lays five eggs, and then tamps soil back in. For one whole day, this mom will guard.                                           Flying dragons rule! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo Source And here is Alan's last poem for the month, combining both prompts in an unusual fashion once more. Baby Potatoes I stand confused in the produce section by baby potatoes. They suggest that some people have a sense of inexhaustible plenty, that it makes some sense to consume the young, the tender, the underdeveloped to suit appetites of those who cannot appreciate how fulfilling the maturely developed can be, how what will be gone in one or two bites could with patient and nurturing stewardship fill a hungry belly and provide for the next planting instead of appealing to privileged preference who expects always to have access to a gulped taste that never sates it, grabbing for more. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] The notion of "harvest" is implied by the poem as a whole, and the tone achieves the dispassionate feeling suggested in the prompt. Thanks for coming by the blog all month, everyone. It's been fun poeming with Alan and, of course, with you. See you in April next year. Friends, today, 30 April 2026, is the last day of my two-year term as Poet Laureate of Iowa. It was a wonderful two years, traveling to different parts of Iowa and giving poetry readings, poetry workshops, and poetry lectures at colleges and universities, town libraries, bookstores, literary festivals like Poetry Palooza, churches, Rotary Clubs, the Iowa Veterans Home, various groups of literary lovers, and writers' groups. I had the privilege of being commissioned to write (and completing) the official sesquicentennial poem for the University of Northern Iowa's 150-year anniversary. I was also glad to be asked to write several ekphrastic poems on artworks on the Iowa State University campus as well as do a "Poetry Walk" visiting those artworks with an audience and reading those poems aloud there. Thanks to all the lovely audience members and event organizers. Best of luck to Paul Brooke, the incoming Poet Laureate starting on Mayday. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Day 29 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 103

Hello, everyone! My poem today is #103 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #468, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count). Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a pocket poem.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “[C]ompare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind." Combining both prompts, as usual. I hope tomorrow I can finish the whole month combining all the prompts. My Pocket Poem Tomorrow is “Poem in Your Pocket Day.” The last pocket poem I wrote was 14 years ago. My life was so different then. I was married, but a couple of months from moving out. Like many Aprils before, I was also having bad hay fever . . . springtime, so much pollen in the air. Those days were notoriously unhappy. But today, thanks to allergy shots, I’m free from hay fever. More important, the biggest change of all is, I’ve met the love of my life. Renee and I have had a happy couple of years. Blissful years. That’s our sweet pocket! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] And here is Alan's pocket poem, combining both prompts in an unusual fashion. The Watch Pocket Naive university freshman, grandparents’ first-generation student, living away from home for the first time, you decided to use a pocket watch your parents had given you for fun. It was louder than you realized, and, during an in-class examination, your professor said to put it away, and you wore a wristwatch from that time on. You flattened your nasal intonation by speaking from your chest almost like hums, and you made fewer one-syllable words shift tone and pitch midway through. I don’t know where that watch is now; when I get tired, though, that tone shift returns with a worn tenor, and my watch pocket holds two guitar picks, and I teach literature about the folks we learned to hold inside long years ago. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo Source Don't you think that's actually a self-portrait? Very interesting way to fulfill the past-and-present life prompt. Thanks for coming by the blog, everyone. See you again tomorrow? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Day 28 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 102

Hello, everyone! My poem today is #102 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #467, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count). Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For the fourth and final Two-for-Tuesday prompt:  1) Write a love poem, and/or . . . 2) Write an anti-love poem.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, try writing a poem [with] three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion." Combining all three prompts . . . a very small space to get all this in. True Love She to him: I love you and I don’t love you. He to her: is that true or is that not true? She to him: either/or; He to her: both/and. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Alan very successfully combined all three prompts. Bravo! The Haters Want Us to Love Them They bought a warehouse, replacing goods with people. See how a bully calls foul when he's called "bully"? He insists on love when all we want is justice. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo Source Thanks for coming by the blog, everyone. See you again tomorrow? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ