Whoo!

Tinder

Dancing on Coals

At the Elevator

Sky Stained with Smoke

Identified

Sonnet for the Seven

Antonietta

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.

Tinder

March 25th, 1911
4:44

Triangle Shirtwaist factory

Eighth floor

We are tinder

one spark to set us all

alight.

Strike! Strike! Strike!

We stood and bled on the picket line

with hand lettered signs and no coats,

but we were tinder burst into flame

kept warm by our own words and

the hope that things would get better.

Now my union sisters and I

are trapped in this airless room

with a hundred needles skimming through white lawn.

Today is pay-day,

how much will we be fined for

speaking, stretching, looking out the window?

I want to say, “We are tinder!

Fight back, again, and maybe

this time,

this time we can win.”

But our union is finished,

and life is just as it was before:

locked doors, cut pay, dust in the air…

No. Not dust.

Smoke.

At the Elevator

At the Elevator,
 4:55
9th floor

Lucia beat one fist

against the wire bound glass, screaming

her voice raw with a terror

as vicious as the flames

and as unrelenting.

You promised you would come back

she wanted to cry to the operator, so come back! 

The doors are locked,

for the love of God

come back for us!

But what left her mouth was

Mama!

Through the press of bodies

she stretched out both shaking arms

wrapped in singed and tattered lawn,

searching. Mama had been beside her,

Where are you? She coughed, sucking in

smoke.

There, she touched a familiar arm.

She clung to it,

as though the hand that had soothed fevers

could stop the flush in her cheeks now.

Fire-lit faces seemed all the same 

in the haze, but Lucia picked out one,

five feet off the ground. Her glass heart

shattered.

Lucia kissed her sister's head, smoothed

her curls with one hand.

Madonna mia, not Rosaria, too.

She is so young,

we are all too young

to die here.

We are works in progress,

half-finished shirtwaists,

but she is fourteen.

Around her people screamed

Yiddish, and English

and the Italian of home,

one plea, one cry-

Please, God

I do not want to burn-

the words almost drowning out the roar 

of the flames.

The elevator did not come back,

did not come back

did not come back

The pile of women separated

by faith and language

held each other now.

They were dying here,

Protestant, Catholic and Jew.

No more differences among them, only 

fear, desperation, faith in a better place

beyond smoke and charred flesh.

No one would die alone, but all

in the arms of 

a mother, sister, daughter, cousin,

a friend. There was no room for strangers

breathing in each other's breath

breathing out the same plea:

I do not want to die,

in so many dialects.

Rosaria pressed her face against Lucia's shirtwaist

and Mama pulled them close to her breast

their hearts beating in time.

Prayers offered up in all those

shrill, hoarse voices, never sounded 

so holy as the flames

closed in.

Locked- 4:47

Locked, 4:47
8th floor

Thud, thud, thud
a chorus of hands slamming against metal
and wire bound glass.

Locked, the doors are locked
they always have been.
But maybe, if enough hands pound,
enough voices
thick and shrill with smoke and desperation
cry out
--Madonna mia, aiudami! 
Oh God, someone help!
Ratevet, ratevet--
the doors will open
and we can stream out
 down nine stories of stairs
and not through the windows.

Thus, thud, thud
bodies trailing flaming skirts crash through glass
to slam the ground.

Identified

March 26th 1911

Temporary morgue

Rose knew.

Of course she knew.

The whole city had seen the flames,

had seen the men and women sobbing,

had seen the sons and daughters leaping

their clothing on fire as they struck cement.

But she had hoped.

Oh, God, she had hoped.

It was Shabbat and he was going

to see her after sundown.

She waited and prayed,

and when he didn't come, she knew.

Of course she knew.

They led her through the room,

filled with bodies blackened

or twisted,

bones at every angle.

Some had parents

brothers, cousins

children

weeping over them.

Some were alone

as people filed past.

Box 34.

It was the ring that caught her eye

like the one on her finger. She took the hand--

what was left of a hand

and she knew.

The body was nothing like her Joseph

charred beyond recognition.

Oh, God, she would never kiss his lips.

Her breath caught in her lungs

and she tasted ash,

could feel heat on her skin.

The screaming that had echoed in the square

echoed in her ears.

She stared at what was left

of his face.

"Joseph," she said

when the attendant asked who he was.

"Oh, God, he was only twenty-two."

The man nodded, wrote

something on a tag.

"His watch, do you have his watch?"

He nodded, and handed Rose a box.

Fitting, his last tie to home would be

her last tie to him.

She cradled it in her hands, pulled out

his pocket watch, all he owned of value,

and opened it, gently, as he had.

The glass was cracked

the hands unmoving

and from the opposite side beamed her face.

Like glass, her heart splintered.

She sank to her knees, sobs tearing at her throat,

and understood wanting sackcloth and ashes.

She wanted to keen her grief to the heavens. 

She wanted to rip her shirtwaist and wail

How could this happen?

Oh, God, we were to be married in June.

Dancing on coals

Dancing on coals-
4:50
9th floor.

The cutter boy extends his hand

callused from working with heavy shears

since the shops reopened a year gone.

Flames are in his dark eyes,

“Gussie, here.”

I can hardly breathe, so I only nod

and take his hand.

Morris leads me into a dance, wild, and racing

I have to catch up the hem of my skirt

so as not to fall and be trampled.

Things are too crowded by the doorways:

no room for two more bodies there.

My breath catches in my throat,

the clamor is growing,

the windows are all open to dusk-grey air.

My shoes are too small and not made

for dancing on coals.

My feet burn as I stumble.

“Morris, I need air, I need—out.”

There are bonfires in his eyes, his face is glowing

and he nods, still holding my hand.

As we push through to one window

where the air is cooler,

he helps another girl up onto the ledge,

then another,

so they can breathe as well.

I raise a hand to his cheek,

my feet are burning and now my eyes as well.

I have only known him for this year,

when he delivered shirtwaists to my table.

But I want to be beside him

and he knows without saying.

He bows, then helps me to stand,

my hands shaking,

in the window frame.

I put my arms around him,

and kiss him long

longer than we have.

The flames behind us are growing.

My eyes find his, and

he lets me go, then follows me.

It does not take a long time to fall to the ground

even from nine stories up.