Giannina Braschi on September 11 attacks

“What we have here is a war--the war of matter and spirit... The war of banks and religion. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion.”

“When those two towers fell, I felt a dentist had pulled out my two front teeth. I could not laugh anymore. And I have the smile of a smiling damned villain. But I also felt the hole in my mouth became a garage, and entering that garage were terrorists in trucks full of explosives and French diplomats—to fuck us more with other nations—to run over our dead bodies.”

“I thought the brain could rule over the legs. And I thought the brain was white and the legs were yellow or brown. And I thought I could rule with my brain—and even if I cut my legs off—I would find cheap legs in other parts of the world. But now I am a mutilated body. I lost my legs in Korea. I lost my arms in Vietnam. I lost my head in Kuwait. I lost my torso in the World Trade Center.”

“Unburied bodies have unsettled matters—and they stink. The bodies of Polyneices and of Polonius and of Zarathustra’s tightrope walker and of the workers in the World Trade Centers lay stinking in the starry night. They still want to be paid, and they need retribution, vengeance, grudges, memories, teeth, the grinding of teeth, and muttering of curses. We need a legion of gravediggers, architects, and engineers with good faith to build cemeteries for these bodies in the ruins of the World Trade Center. Tony Blair and George Bush declared they would create a new world order out of the ruins of the World Trade Center. But they created chaos and anarchy because instead of burying the bodies they hold grudges of the ghost of vengeance.”