October 24, 1929
Douglas Nordfors

It’s said a murmuring
rose from the crowds of men
both outside and inside
the Stock Exchange, a mur-
muring like subdued fire
crackling just like cows
moaning or slaughtering
their own horror, trying
to… indescribable,
the way money is
and isn’t life, the way
higher, even higher
speculative bubbles
burst before and after
turning all the way back
into descending jelly-
fish pumping, churning years
of water in vain, salt
in men’s veins, leading to
bread and lines, better
than blood after and
before out of mouths
it rose, murmuring
something about savings
and lives of yellow fields
and red and yellow roses
(not even close),
murmuring in unison
a day before the brief
bank bailout, five whole
days before Black
Tuesday began, for lack
of another word, mur-
muring like both burnt
and unused coal both inside
and outside the earth.

October 24, 1929 – Douglas Nordfors

Douglas Nordfors received an MFA from the University of Virginia, and has been publishing poems off and on since the late ’80s in journals such as Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, The Iowa Review, and Quarterly West, and in online journals such as Stickman Review, and The Monarch Review. He published a book of poetry, Auras, in 2008, and another poetry book, The Fate Motif, is forthcoming this fall, both from Plain View Press.