Art that opens conversation...
Poem
On Equal Terms
Remembering the Fire at Triangle Shirtwaist
Roberto in Milwaukee sizes me up, then sidles over
sideways, like a crab, asks if I’ve
heard about the woman ironworker from Kenosha.
It’s no riddle. I read his eyes, pray he’ll go mute.
There are two versions to the story,
he says, placing the bait. I bite, he tells.
She was an apprentice, had two kids, fell from the steel
and died. They say it shows women can’t
handle the business, but
guys fall, too. He waits.
I ask for the other version, the one I see
itching at the soft flesh beneath his shell:
She asked for a safety harness,
foreman said she didn’t need one.
And Seattle, the buzz about the new linewomen? Eager
to impress means easy
to fatigue. Send her up and down, up and down, up
down up the pole. Soon her arms
will just
let
go. Or,
unbuckle her belt, let her test her wings.
When Labor, at century’s start,
bronzed those bales of flaming shirtwaist girls
cascading
out the ninth floor windows of Asch--
was that not a covenant
that the sky would stop
dropping
women?
All poems copyright Susan Eisenberg.
On Equal Terms
