Going To Work By Nancy Mercado

On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck the city of New York. On that fateful day, two airplanes were hijacked by terrorists and flew straight into the twin towers. Each tower fell completely to the ground, taking thousands of lives with it and injuring thousands more. Not only did that day leave thousands of families without their loved ones, it also left an entire city and an entire country to deal with the aftermath of the destruction. Poet, Nancy Mercado, worries that one day people will forget that heartbreaking day. Though there is little danger of forgetting that heartbreaking day, she worries that even she will still forget. She expresses these worries while writing her poem “Going to Work”. She does this by using three poetic devices within her poem: personification, imagery, and symbolism.
Within Mercado’s poem “Going to Work” she reflects on her memories of the twin towers before the attack using personification; giving human-like qualities to the twin towers to further illustrate on her memories of them. Each morning Mercado traveled on a train to work that ran beneath the twin towers. She recalls her morning work commute by descriptively writing: “Forget my hallowed Sunday/ Morning PATH Train rides/ My subway travels through/ The center of your belly” (Mercado 601). She also recalls how massive the twin towers were and how it was able to make objects seem smaller than usual because of the size of the twin towers: “Afraid I’ll forget your powers/ To transform