To the girl across the aisle

How many children of Israel,

born into the Covenant,

fell away into Idolatry?

How many Converts

growing up faithless

found truth

and held fast?

Many.

Multitudes.

Knowing this, that the faith

of the father influences

but does not determine

his daughter's,

how can you sit there,

across the aisle from me,

and call my mother

quote: So, so, so, so dumb?

How dare you claim

that she will fall away

into idolatry

because she was married

in her mother's living room.

You sit there and insinuate

that my faith is worth less

than yours,

is shakier not because

I have felt abandoned by God,

but because my father

didn't sit next to me at church.

Being Covenant-born does not make

a child perfect, free from sin

or temptation.

I have seen temple marriages fall apart.

I have seen the children of two

 devote Members,

Holy as Angels,

turn to drugs, skip church

to smoke, worshiping

the Idol of pornography.

And I have seen two people

who love and support

each other,

who share values but not religion.

How dare you say that

the children of such

people, pure in love,

are ticking time bombs,

falling away into Idolatry,

that I will make all the wrong choices

and only bring grief?

I am not a miracle, exception to the rule.

My faith is mine, not because of my mother's,

not in spite of my father's.

It was mine to doubt, mine to choose.

And then, how dare you

simper, say you are

sorry that I was offended,

putting all the blame on me.

Because of course, I chose to be offended

when you insult who I am,

who my family is.

With unchristian ignorance

you chose to offend.

You do not apologize for your words

your implications, for calling my mother

quote: So, so, so, so dumb.

Call me what you want:

faithless, worthless

don't hide behind "I don't mean it"s

you only add when I stand up.

you meant it when you spoke about others

in my situation.

but my mother's faith

saved me,

she is my world

my best friend.

Call me what you will, 

but don't you dare touch my mother.

Sky Stained with Smoke

4:52  
tenth floor and roof                                                                                                                                                   

Blinded by smoke and tears

an Italian prayer on her lips,

she stumbles, catching her shin

on the  Green Street stairs.

A rough hand grabs her arm

hauls her to her feet.

"Tessie, move!" her rescuer says,

or she thinks he says, his words

are nothing like her Papa's.

He leads her and others up

not down, to a rooftop

where the sky breaks through grey air,

blue stained with smoke.

At last she can breathe

she looks at the faces of the others,

searching and not finding.

The next-door building's roof

is too far above this one

and Tessie wonders if

they have come here to die.

Then someone lowers a ladder

over the side.

Her burned hands throb as she climbs.

They all flood into this building, a school,

with flame free stairwells,

 but it is not until NYU students,

jabbering in English,

have led her to the streets

full of watchers pale with horror

that she realizes.

She asks, haltingly,

"Where is Vincenzia? Please,

she was on the ninth floor."

No one answers

as another body,

shirtwaist gleaming in the sun,

falls.

Locked

4:47
Ninth floor

"The doors open in!

Move!”

No one hears her, just one more voice.

The ninth floor workers throw

themselves at metal doors,

screaming: Ratevet! Auidami! Help!

The flames are drawing closer,

like too hot blankets

and fear-sweat sticks Kate's shirtwaist

to her back, to her girl's chest

too tight to breathe.

Someone screams in Yiddish

and the crowd, hands trembling,

moves back just enough.

The fire licks at their skirts.

"Hail Mary," Kate whispers

against the hot air.

The doors shudder as girls pull,

the metal burning their hands.

They do not let go

but the door--

the door is locked.

Antonietta,

March 25th 2011

Red ink on white

the Cornell website's list

of victims,

not blood on cloth, but

names, ages.

I have known the stories,

the numbers,

one hundred forty six dead,

too many to imagine.

Reading now for research’s sake

I'd tried to distance myself,

but my heart falters.

I read my own name:

Antonietta.

Sixteen years old.

Suddenly these girls are more

than names on a list

more than digital ink.

I picture myself at sixteen:

unable to tame Italian curls,

Papa telling me the stories

his Italian Mama told him.

Perhaps she knew those same stories.

Perhaps she too fought

with her brother,

but loved him all the same.

Who might she have been,

I wonder. What dreams did she hold

in her heart,

and what prayers did she think

as she leaped?

Sonnet for the Seven,

April 3rd 1911                                                                                                                                                            Evergreen Cemetery                        

The rain came down and soaked the streets too late
too late to stop the flames that caused such pain
for our city. And as we walked, the weight
upon our hearts did break the floodgate chain.

"Abide with me, Abide with me," we sang.
Half-million strong we gathered round and cried
with Jew and Gentile, all our voices rang,
remembering the day our daughters died.

But for these sev'n I only placed my stone
upon the graves, and others did so, too.
We could not let them be buried alone,
they had no names or faces that we knew.

So in this April rain, we vigil keep
and for their mothers, sisters all, we weep.

editing

Red ink spiders across the page,

slashing out words, underscoring sentences 

that don't make sense. 

Script jagged from frustration

spells out the problems:

"Is that your thesis?" 

"Is that?"

"I’m confused-- the only claim you make

is that people don’t care about history classes

but it’s vaguely worded;

is that your thesis?" 

And later in the body paragraphs-- more like

hide the body, because you murdered

the English language-- more ink.

"Cliche." 

"Do you mean "poignant?" "

"That is a run-on sentence AND

a sentence fragment both at once. How?" 

and of course:

"Citation needed."

"Cite this" 

“THAT’S A QUOTE CITE IT”

"For the love of--

you have one footnote in this whole paper!" 

Go back and re-read it ,

this time for content again, 

this time focus on what is there, not 

what is missing.

"No, some states do have standardized

testing for history, 

I had it for ten years."

"What do you mean people in California 

don’t learn about civil rights?!?" 

"Actually not everyone discovers themselves

in high school, 

or learns what they want to stand for. "

"That is an opinion right there, don’t present it as fact. 

At least cite it." 

The paper is bleeding with edits now, 

gashed, scored, and annotated 

in two inch margins. 

On the final page

(note: no bibliography)

the harsh corrections stand out 

against the pale blue text copied 

from wikipedia.

"Wait, was that the thesis?"