WENDY ROSE (b. 1948)
Three Thousand Dollar Death Song (1980)
“Nineteen American Indian skeletons
from Nevada . . . valued at $3000 . . .”
—Museum invoice, 1975
Is it in cold hard cash? the kind
that dusts the insides of men’s pockets
lying silver-polished surface along the cloth.
Or in bills? papering the wallets of they
who thread the night with dark words. Or 5
checks? paper promises weighing the same
as words spoken once on the other side
of the grown grass and dammed rivers
of history. However it goes, it goes.
Through my body it goes 10
assessing each nerve, running its edges
along my arteries, planning ahead
for whose hands will rip me
into pieces of dusty red paper,
whose hands will smooth or smatter me 15
into traces of rubble. Invoiced now,
it’s official how our bones are valued
that stretch out pointing to sunrise
or are flexed into one last foetal bend,
that are removed and tossed about, 20
catalogued, numbered with black ink
on newly-white foreheads.
As we were formed to the white soldier’s voice,
so we explode under white students’ hands.
Death is a long trail of days 25
in our fleshless prison.
From this distant point we watch our bones
auctioned with our careful beadwork,
our quilled medicine bundles, even the bridles
of our shot-down horses.You: who have 30
priced us, you who have removed us: at what cost?
What price the pits where our bones share
a single bit of memory, how one century
turns our dead into specimens, our history
into dust, our survivors into clowns. 35
Our memory might be catching, you know;
picture the mortars, the arrowheads, the labrets
shaking off their labels like bears
suddenly awake to find the seasons have ended
while they slept. Watch them touch each other, 40
measure reality, march out the museum door!
Watch as they lift their faces
and smell about for us; watch our bones rise
to meet them and mount the horses once again!
The cost, then, will be paid 45
for our sweetgrass-smelling having-been
in clam shell beads and steatite,
dentalia and woodpecker scalp, turquoise
and copper, blood and oil, coal
and uranium, children, a universe 50
of stolen things.
LORNA DEE CERVANTES (b. 1954)
Cannery Town in August (1981)
All night it humps the air.
Speechless, the steam rises
from the cannery columns. I hear
the night bird rave about work
or lunch, or sing the swing shift 5
home. I listen, while bodyless
uniforms and spinach specked shoes
drift in monochrome down the dark
moon-possessed streets. Women
who smell of whiskey and tomatoes, 10
peach fuzz reddening their lips and eyes—
I imagine them not speaking, dumbed
by the can’s clamor and drop
to the trucks that wait, grunting
in their headlights below. 15
They spotlight those who walk
like a dream, with no one
waiting in the shadows
to palm them back to living.
MARY FELL (b. 1947)
The Triangle Fire1 (1983)
I. Havdallah2
This is the great divide
by which God split
the world:
on the Sabbath side
he granted rest, 5
eternal toiling
on the workday side.
But even one
revolution of the world
is an empty promise 10
where bosses
where bills to pay
respect no heavenly bargains.
Until each day is ours
let us pour 15
darkness in a dish
and set it on fire,
bless those who labor
as we pray, praise God
his holy name, 20
strike for the rest.
2. Among the Dead
First a lace of smoke
decorated the air of the workroom,
the far wall unfolded
into fire. The elevator shaft 25
spun out flames like a bobbin,
the last car sank.
I leaped for the cable,
my only chance. Woven steel
burned my hands as I wound 30
to the bottom.
I opened my eyes. I was lying
in the street. Water and blood
washed the cobbles, the sky
rained ash. A pair of shoes 35
lay beside me, in them
two blistered feet.
I saw the weave in the fabric
of a girl’s good coat,
the wilted nosegay pinned to her collar. 40
Not flowers, what I breathed then,
awake among the dead.
3. Asch Building
In a window,
lovers embrace
haloed by light. 45
He kisses her, holds her
gently, lets her go
nine stories to the street.
Even the small ones
put on weight 50
as they fall:
eleven thousand pounds split
the fireman’s net,
implode the deadlights
on the Greene Street side, 55
until the basement catches them
and holds. Here
two faceless ones are found
folded neatly over the steam pipes
like dropped rags. 60
I like the one
on that smoky ledge, taking stock
in the sky’s deliberate mirror.
She gives her hat
to wind, noting its style, 65
spills her week’s pay
from its envelope, a joke
on those who pretend
heaven provides, and chooses
where there is no choice 70
to marry air, to make
a disposition of her life.
4. Personal Effects
One lady’s
handbag, containing
rosary beads, elevated 75
railroad ticket, small pin
with picture, pocket knife,
one small purse containing
$1.68 in cash,
handkerchiefs, 80
a small mirror, a pair of gloves,
two thimbles, a Spanish
comb, one yellow metal ring,
five keys, one
fancy glove button, 85
one lady’s handbag containing
one gent’s watch case
number of movement 6418593
and a $1 bill,
one half dozen postal cards, 90
a buttonhook, a man’s photo,
a man’s garter,
a razor strap,
one portion of limb and hair
of human being. 95
5. Industrialist’s Dream
This one’s
dependable won’t
fall apart
under pressure doesn’t
lie down on the job 100
doesn’t leave early
come late
won’t join unions
strike
ask for a raise 105
unlike one hundred
forty six
others I could name
who couldn’t
take the heat this one’s 110
still at her machine
and doubtless
of spotless moral
character you
can tell by the bones 115
pure white
this one
does what she’s told
and you don’t hear
her complaining. 120
6. The Witness
Woman, I might have watched you
sashay down Washington Street
some warm spring evening
when work let out,
your one thin dress 125
finally right for the weather,
an ankle pretty
as any flower’s stem, full
breasts the moon’s envy, eyes bold
or modest as you passed me by. 130
I might have thought, as heat
climbed from the pavement,
what soft work you’d make
for a man like me:
even the time clock, thief of hours, 135
kinder, and the long day
passing in a dream.
Cradled in that dream
I might have slept
forever, but today’s nightmare 140
vision woke me:
your arms aflame, wings
of fire, and you a falling star,
a terrible lump of coal
in the burning street. 145
No dream, your hair of smoke,
your blackened face.
No dream the fist I make,
taking your hand
of ashes in my own. 150
7. Cortege
A cold rain comforts the sky.
Everything ash-colored under clouds.
I take my place in the crowd,
move without will as the procession moves,
a gray wave breaking against the street. 155
Up ahead, one hundred and forty seven
coffins float, wreckage of lives. I follow
the box without a name. In it
whose hand encloses whose heart? Whose mouth
presses the air toward a scream? 160
She is no one, the one I claim
as sister. When the familiar is tagged
and taken away, she remains.
I do not mourn her. I mourn no one.
I do not praise her. No one 165
is left to praise. Seventy years after
her death, I walk in March rain behind her.
She travels before me into the dark.
KATE RUSHIN (b. 1951)
The Black Back-Ups (1983)
This is dedicated to Merry Clayton, Cissy Houston, Vonetta
Washington, Dawn, Carrietta McClellen, Rosie Farmer, Marsha
Jenkins and Carolyn Williams. This is for all of the Black
women who sang back-up for Elvis Presley, John Denver, James
Taylor, Lou Reed, Etc. Etc. Etc. 5
I said Hey Babe
Take a Walk on the Wild Side
I said Hey Babe
Take a Walk on the Wild Side
And the colored girls say 10
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo
This is for my Great Grandmother Esther, my Grandmother
Addie, my Grandmother called Sister, my Great Aunt Rachel, 15
my Aunt Hilda, my Aunt Tine, my Aunt Breda, my Aunt
Gladys, my Aunt Helen, my Aunt Ellie, my Cousin Barbara, my
Cousin Dottie and my Great Great Aunt Vene
This is dedicated to all of the Black women riding on buses
and subways Back and forth to the Main Line, Haddonfield, 20
N.J., Cherry Hill and Chevy Chase. This is for those women who
spend their summers in Rockport, Newport, Cape Cod and
Camden, Maine. This is for the women who open bundles of
dirty laundry sent home from ivy-covered campuses
And the colored girls say 25
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo
Jane Fox Jane Fox
Calling Jane Fox 30
Where are you Jane?
My Great Aunt Rachel worked for the Foxes
Ever since I can remember
There was The Boy
Whose name I never knew 35
And there was The Girl
Whose name was Jane
My Aunt Rachel brought Jane’s dresses for me to wear
Perfectly Good Clothes
And I should’ve been glad to get them 40
Perfectly Good Clothes
No matter they didn’t fit quite right
Perfectly Good Clothes Jane
Brought home in a brown paper bag with an air of
Accomplishment and excitement 45
Perfectly Good Clothes
Which I hated
It’s not that I have anything personal against you Jane
It’s just that I felt guilty
For hating those clothes 50
I mean
Can you get to the irony of it Jane?
And the colored girls say
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo 55
Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo
At school
In Ohio
I swear to Gawd
There was always somebody 60
Telling me that the only person
In their whole house
Who listened and understood them
Despite the money and the lessons
Was the housekeeper 65
And I knew it was true
But what was I supposed to say?
I know it’s true
I watch them getting off the train
And moving slowly toward the Country Squire 70
With their uniform in their shopping bag
And the closer they get to the car
The more the two little kids jump and laugh
And even the dog is about to
Turn inside out 75
Because they just can’t wait until she gets there
Edna Edna Wonderful Edna
(But Aunt Edna to me, or Gram, or Miz Johnson, or Sister
Johnson on Sundays)
And the colored girls say 80
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo
This is for Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Ethel Waters1
Saphire2 85
Saphronia
Ruby Begonia
Aunt Jemima
Aunt Jemima on the Pancake Box
Aunt Jemima on the Pancake Box? 90
AuntJemimaonthepancakebox?
auntjemimaonthepancakebox?
Ainchamamaonthepancakebox?
Ain’t chure Mama on the pancake box?
Mama Mama 95
Get offa that damn box
And come home to me
And my Mama leaps offa that box
She swoops down in her nurse’s cape
Which she wears on Sunday 100
And on Wednesday night prayer meeting
And she wipes my forehead
And she fans my face for me
And she makes me a cup o’ tea
And it don’t do a thing for my real pain 105
Except she is my Mama
Mama Mommy Mommy Mammy Mammy
Mam-mee Mam-mee
I’d Walk a mill-yon miles
For one o’ your smiles 110
This is for the Black Back-ups
This is for my mama and your mama
My grandma and your grandma
This is for the thousand thousand Black Back-Ups
And the colored girls say 115
Do dodo do do dodododo
Dododododo
Dodo
do
Do 120
do
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (b. 1949)
song: My Hometown (1984)
I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I’d sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through
town
He’d tousle my hair and say son take a good look around
This is your hometown 5
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
In ’65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white 10
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown 15
My hometown
My hometown
Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks 20
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to
your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Last night me and Kate we laid in bed talking about getting out 25
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I’m thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look
around this is your hometown
PATRICIA DOBLER (b. 1939)
Uncles’ Advice, 1957 (1986)
My handsome uncles like dark birds
flew away to war. They all flew back
glossier and darker than before, but willing
to be clipped to the mill for reasons
of their own—a pregnant girl, 5
a business failed, the seductive sound
of accents they’d grown up with—
so they settled, breaking promises to themselves.
This was the time when, moping in my room
while the aunts’ voices rose through the floorboards 10
prophesying my life—stews and babushkas—
the uncles’ advice also filtered up
like the smoky, persistent 5-note song
of the mourning dove: get out, don’t come back.
MAGGIE ANDERSON (b. 1948)
Mining Camp Residents
West Virginia, July, 1935 (1986)
They had to seize something in the face of the camera.
The woman’s hand touches her throat as if feeling
for a necklace that isn’t there. The man buries one hand
in his overall pocket, loops the other through a strap,
and the child twirls a strand of her hair as she hunkers 5
in the dirt at their feet. Maybe Evans1 asked them to stand
in that little group in the doorway, a perfect triangle
of people in the morning sun. Perhaps he asked them
to hold their arms that way, or bend their heads. It was
his composition after all. And they did what he said. 10
TODD JAILER (b. 1956)
Bill Hastings (1990)
Listen to me, college boy, you can
keep your museums and poetry and string quartets
’cause there’s nothing more beautiful than
line work. Clamp your jaws together
and listen: 5
It’s a windy night, you’re freezing the teeth out
of your zipper in the ten below, working stiff
jointed and dreaming of Acapulco, the truck cab.
Can’t keep your footing for the ice, and
even the geese who died to fill your vest 10
are sorry you answered the call-out tonight.
You drop a connector and curses
take to the air like sparrows who freeze
and fall back dead at your feet.
Finally you slam the SMD fuse1 home. 15
Bang! The whole valley lights up below you
where before was unbreathing darkness.
In one of those houses a little girl
stops shivering. Now that’s beautiful,
and it’s all because of you. 20
SHERMAN ALEXIE (b. 1966)
The Reservation Cab Driver (1991)
waits outside the Breakaway Bar
in the ’65 Malibu with no windshield.
It’s a beer a mile. No exceptions.
He picks up Lester FallsApart
who lives in the West End 5
twelve miles away, good for a half-rack.
When congress raised the minimum wage
the reservation cab driver upped his rates
made it a beer and a cigarette each mile.
HUD1 evicted him 10
so he wrapped himself in old blankets
and slept in the front seat of his cab.
When the BIA2 rescinded his benefits
he added a can of commodities for every mile.
Seymour climbed in the cab 15
said, this is a hell of a pony.
Ain’t no pony, the reservation cab driver
said, it’s a car.
During the powwow, he works 24 hours a day
gets paid in quilts, beads, fry bread, firewood. 20
3 a.m., he picks up Crazy Horse hitchhiking.
Where are you going, asks the reservation cab driver.
Same place you are, Crazy Horse answers
somewhere way up the goddamn road.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ (b. 1954)
Journeys (1991)
El Paso/Juárez1
1984
Every day she crosses. She
has been here before, has passed these streets
so often she no longer notices the shops
nor their names nor the people. No longer
notices the officials at the bridge who let her 5
pass as if she were going shopping. They know
her, know where she’s going, do not ask questions.
They have stopped smiling at each other.
Each morning she walks from her
Juárez home, crosses the bridge to El Paso. 10
Downtown, she waits for a bus that takes her
to a house where she irons and cleans and cooks.
She is not afraid to get caught. The Border
Patrol does not stop her as she waits for
the bus after work. They know what she does, 15
know she has no permit—but how would it look
arresting decent people’s maids? How
would it look? And besides, she’s a woman
getting old. The Migra2 prefers to chase
young men. She no longer notices their green 20
vans. They do not exist for her.
Nor she, for them.
She does not mind the daily journeys,
not far, and “really,” she says to herself,
“it is all one city, Juárez and El Paso. 25
The river is small and tired. A border? Ha!”
She sits, she laughs, she catches her bus to go home.
The woman whose house she cleans
asked her once if she wanted to be an American.
“No,” she smiled, “I’m happy.” What for, 30
she thought, what for? My children, they want
to live here. Not me. I belong in my Juárez.
She cooks, she cleans, she takes her bus.
She journeys every day. The journey is easy,
never takes a long time, and always it is sunny. 35
When it rains, the people who live here
praise God—but she, she curses him
for the spit that soaks her skin.
1The youth is scavenging in the gutter.
2To pay their jailer.
1Hey, whitey.
1Country house.
2Popular song sung early in the morning to celebrate a birthday, a saint’s day, or a
wedding.
1African American neighborhood in Chicago.
1Printed in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), by Frederick Douglass.
1Digging weeds.
2Farm yard.
3Sigh.
4Severe headaches.>
1Town in western California.>
1Port on St. Croix, one of the Virgin Islands.
1Television program for children.>
1Chinese dialect.
1Peruvian poet and novelist (1895–1938).
2Chilean poet (1889–1957).
1On March 25, 1911, a fire started at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, on the ninth floor of the Asch building. Hundreds of women workers, mostly Italian and Russian Jewish immigrants, had been locked in to keep out union organizers and therefore could not escape. Nearly one hundred fifty women, some as young as fourteen, died in the fire.
2Ceremony marking the end of the Jewish Sabbath.>
1The first two are actors, the third a jazz and blues singer.
2Black character on a popular radio and television show.
1Walker Evans (1903–1975), photographer known especially for his portrayal of the Great Depression in rural America.
1Fuse in an electrical substation.
1Department of Housing and Urban Development.
2Bureau of Indian Affairs.
1El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico.
2Immigration police.>
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