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A Moment Of Silence by Emmanuel Ortiz

A stunning poem on mourning the victims of history’s violence, putting Sptember 11 into context. Emmanuel Ortiz is a Minnesota poet who read this in the National poetry slam this year.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of
silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of
those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have
died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence for the Blacks under
Apartheid in South Africa, where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence for the millions of dead in Viet Nam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war … ssssshhhhh …. Say nothing … we don’t want them to learn that they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,

An hour of silence for El Salvador … An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua … Two days of silence for the Guetmaltecos … None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west… 100 years of silence…

For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here, Whose land and lives were stolen,

In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness …

So you want a moment of silence?

And we are all left speechless Our tongues snatched from our mouths Our eyes stapled shut A moment of silence And the poets have all been laid to rest The drums disintegrating into dust

Before I begin this poem, You want a moment of silence

You mourn now as if the world will never be the same And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be. Not like it always has been

Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem This is a 9/10 poem, It is a 9/9 poem, A 9/8 poem, A 9/7 poem This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written And if this is a 9/11 poem, then This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971 This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977 This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971. This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.

This is a poem for every date
that falls to the ground in ashes This is a poem for the 110 stories that
were never told The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead? We could give you lifetimes of empty:

The unmarked graves The lost languages The uprooted trees and histories The dead stares on the faces of nameless children Before I start this poem we could be silent forever Or just long enough to hunger, For the dust to bury us

And you would still ask us For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence

Then stop the oil pumps Turn off the engines and the televisions Sink the cruise ships Crash the stock markets Unplug the marquee lights, Delete the instant messages, Derail the trains, the light rail transit

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell, And pay the workers for wages lost

Tear down the liquor stores, The townhouses, the White Houses, the
jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys. If you want a moment of
silence,

Then take it

On Super Bowl Sunday, The Fourth of July During Dayton’s 13 hour sale Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered You want a moment of silence

Then take it Now,

Before this poem begins.

Here, in the echo of my voice, In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand In the space between bodies in embrace, Here is your silence

Take it.

But take it all Don’t cut in line. Let your silence begin at the beginning
of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing For our dead.