I am a woman
of
No history,
bequeathed by ghostly ancestors,
Abandoning origins,
lost
amid the 22 million
—broken—
shamed,
cattle-prodded
through the cavernous,
Ellis Island halls
sweating human misery
They willed to me:
no stories, no customs, no heirlooms,
no words from the languages
of their births.
Just—
Whispers
streaming,
waves of fear fleeing hostility and bigotry
—pogroms—
sweaping Europe
executing
Jews.
They willed to me
only
a handful of sepia-faded faces—
with
no
places,
no
dates,
and
no
names.
Dirty Immigrants.
Victims.
Beguiled
by the American dream of oblivion,
they requested their pasts be cremated
along-side them.
And so it was done, in honor of their
broken backs
rendered in the melting pot—
skin worn to shoe leather.
Probed for labor fitness,
Stripped
Searched,
Inspected,
Renamed,
Mandated
Labeled
Tagged
Mass processed.
Branded
at Ellis Island,
(aliens) (untrustworthy)
Indentured servants for the fat old English Man that vouchsafed them,
(Eastern European—different)
Slaves
for Northern Factories.
Scurrying to his Summons:
Kykes, Hymies, Shylocks, Krauts, Jerrys….
(At least Not Chinks, banned 1862)
One more group exploited
(And Not Japs, barred 1902)
to
Tote that barge,and lift that bale.
Fettered.
Bull-penned in Factory towns
Shilled in Factory stores,
—Trapped—
before Northern Europeans only quotas 1924,
legislated, legalized more
discrimination, detention and deportation as the norm,
the very sentiments my grandparents
tried to bury before begetting progeny.
They’d all been lured by metaphors
of streets paved with gold,
Only to find beneath their feet
Not even wooden planks,
Just shovels, mud and jumbled stones
To learn that servitude
required
they be the ones to
Pave them.
I want to dredge up their ashes,
And minuscule,
fragmented bones,
Festively gilding them to tie into my hair.
Ornaments and Amulets,
bearing witness to my origins.
But their inscrutable faces murmur,
Let dead relatives be.
They do not understand my need.
You are the last, they accuse,
as if my only worth lay
in the passing on of genes.
Soon enough, they sigh,
soon enough you will
also be
a handful of dusty ashes
meaningful to no one
and nobody
will ever know you were.
Buried in the Nothingness
Of the
Chimera
They call America
3 comments:
You are an amazingly talented writer. The imagery contained here will keep me pondering for days. May you Solstice be merry and bright.
"They’d all been lured by metaphors
of streets paved with gold."
Ironically when anyone asks my father why he came to here, his reply is always "to make more money."
And many are shocked when he says he didn't come here for "freedom."
This is really powerful. Really beautiful.
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