Another "iconic" Sighting

When even the notable Francine Prose -- novelist, short story writer, essayist, visiting professor at Bard and former president of the PEN American Center -- can fall into the "iconic" black hole, what hope is there. From tomorrow's NYT Travel section, the lead sentence: "For many people, especially those who don't live in and around Los Angeles, the idea of Sunset Boulevard conjures up the iconic Billy Wilder film of that name...." What does "iconic" add to that description? What does it even mean?

Pronouns and Their Antecedents

Time for grammar. Pronouns refer to nouns, and for them to make sense, they have to follow the noun (the antecedent) they refer to. If a pronoun precedes its antecedent, it can make the sentence more or less confusing. Here's an example:

"In 1976, the radical left was about as powerful as it would ever be in postwar Britain, and, much like their counterparts in the United States, British New Left intellectuals were increasingly focused on cultural questions, including questions about representation and language." (The Nation magazine, June 2015)

The problematic pronoun here is their, in the transition from first to second clause. In the first clause, the pronoun it refers to the radical left (collective nouns in American English are generally considered singular). But when readesr come to that their, they are left to wonder, what's its antecedent? The radical left? That noun phrase has already been replaced by it, so why switch to a plural pronoun here? In the second clause, however, we see that their really refers to British New Left intellectuals -- but with the pronoun preceding its antecedent, readers have to stop and do some mental untangling, distracting them from following the writer's argument. A little shifting around of phrases can solve the problem easily.

"In 1976, the radical left was about as powerful as it would ever be in postwar Britain, and British New Left intellectuals, much like their counterparts in the United States, were increasingly focused on cultural questions, including questions about representation and language."

Any questions?

Here's what the workshop did with my stories

So what we were supposed to do in the workshop was read our stories aloud, but in the following sequence: paragraph 1 from first story, paragraph 1 from second story, paragraph 2 from first story, paragraph 2 from second story, etc, interweaving the paragraphs from each story so we had an 8-paragraph story of 400 words. What was so curious to me about this exercise was that when I wrote the stories separately, each narrator was a completely different person, yet when the grafs were interwoven, it all sounded like the same "I." And similarities in the stories I hadn't noticed shone through: abandonment, language. 

I don't know whether this exercise would work with children, but it might well work with high schoolers.

 Untitled (so far)

            I don’t know who I am talking to. I don’t know whom I am talking to. Mrs. McHenry knows if I should say “who” or “whom.” She marked my 10th-grade papers for grammar. Never spelling. I’ve always been good at spelling.

            We drove into Dubrovnik from the airport. The winding road up the coast offered glimpses of the blue Adriatic, diamonds of sunlight floating on the surface. Thank god they drive on the right side of the road here.

            The cardboard sign I made for when I sit on the street is perfectly spelled, but I’m not sure of the grammar. “Im lost in New York City need to get to Richmond, Va. for my mother’s funeral. Please help.” Should I put a comma in there somewhere?

            At the hotel I let Dominic talk to the desk clerk. Dominic seemed to inhale languages as soon as he stepped off the plane. I watched him chat up the clerk in his baby-Serbo-Croatian. The clerk laughed, shook her head, repeated some word several times.

            I lost everything when my boyfriend took my suitcase. I didn’t notice. I’m napping at his friend’s apartment. Not really napping. I smoked a joint right after breakfast, well, it’s not a joint, it’s crack.

            At lunch in the old city, inside the medieval walls, Dominic told me the clerk almost didn’t give us a room because she thought he was  Serb. “There’s no Serbo-Croatian language anymore,” he mused. “She said I need a dictionary to translate from Serbian into Croatian.” I didn’t know. I was a typical American, monolingual and condemned to stay that way.

            I don’t notice when he takes the suitcase. I don’t notice when he doesn’t come back. I don’t notice when his friend says I have to leave. I notice when he pulls me up from the chair and pushes me out the door. I notice I don’t have my suitcase. I notice when I pawn my pearl necklace so I can eat dinner. I notice how cold it is on the street.

            Dominic led me up to the top of the wall, where we walked until we could see the water. I tried to imagine the war, when Dubrovnik was bombarded. Dominic said, “Wait here,” so I watched sunlight drip into the Adriatic, the bright fade to glow, the shades of blue deepen to navy. The stone wall chilled in the dark.

Slice of Life Tuesday

     I'm taking a writing workshop at the moment, and today's assignment is to write two short stories, 200 words max, in 4 grafs, set in two different cities or towns. Once we get to the workshop, our instructor will have some "surprising" way of presenting the stories. Since we've been working on upending chronology, I wonder if she will have us mixing up the stories. But I thought I would share the stories as I've written them here, and tomorrow I'll let you know what they turn into.
     (For those of you who may have read my last Slice of Life, I want to assure you that things are better, not least because my husband has taken over the bandaging himself. I should also credit him with step 21; that's his dream, not mine.)

I Don’t Notice

            I don’t know who I am talking to. I don’t know whom I am talking to. Mrs. McHenry knows if I should say “who” or “whom.” She marked my 10th-grade papers for grammar. Never spelling. I’ve always been good at spelling.

            The cardboard sign I made for when I sit on the street is perfectly spelled, but I’m not sure of the grammar. “Im lost in New York City need to get to Richmond, Va. for my mother’s funeral. Please help.” Should I put a comma in there somewhere?

            I lost everything when my boyfriend took my suitcase. I didn’t notice. I’m napping at his friend’s apartment. Not really napping. I smoked a joint right after breakfast, well, it’s not a joint, it’s crack.

            I don’t notice when he takes the suitcase. I don’t notice when he doesn’t come back. I don’t notice when his friend says I have to leave. I notice when he pulls me up from the chair and pushes me out the door. I notice I don’t have my suitcase. I notice when I pawn my pearl necklace so I can eat dinner. I notice how cold it is on the street.

What’s Your Language?

            We drove into Dubrovnik from the airport. The winding road up the coast offered glimpses of the blue Adriatic, diamonds of sunlight floating on the surface. Thank god they drive on the right side of the road here.

            At the hotel I let Dominic talk to the desk clerk. Dominic seemed to inhale languages as soon as he stepped off the plane. I watched him chat up the clerk in his baby-Serbo-Croatian. The clerk laughed, shook her head, repeated some word several times.

            At lunch in the old city, inside the medieval walls, Dominic told me the clerk almost didn’t give us a room because she thought he was  Serb. “There’s no Serbo-Croatian language anymore,” he mused. “She said I need a dictionary to translate from Serbian into Croatian.” I didn’t know. I was a typical American, monolingual and condemned to stay that way.

            Dominic led me up to the top of the wall, where we walked until we could see the water. I tried to imagine the war, when Dubrovnik was bombarded. Dominic said, “Wait here,” so I watched sunlight drip into the Adriatic, the bright fade to glow, the shades of blue deepen to navy. The stone wall chilled in the dark.

Slice of Life Tuesday

How to Become a Nurse in 24 Steps

1. Have no interest in the internal workings of the human body. Have no interest in medicine.

2. Have a spouse whose health becomes less than optimal. Weather his health crisis, with complications, 17 years ago, and his fall last year and developing disability.

3. See a therapist to handle your emotional complications to your spouse’s physical complications.

4. Shriek in the quiet room of your dreams.

5. Wake up to water leaking from his legs.

6. Panic.

7. Find gauze bandages in a closet and wonder why they are there.

8. Panic.

9. Make a bandage to soak up the leaking fluid.

10. Change the bandage.

11. Change the bandage again.

12. Change the bandage again.

13. Cry in the shower.

14. Photograph the growing size and number of blisters on his leg.

15. Panic.

16. Change the bandage.

17. Think of spreading butter on puff pastry as you spread medication on the bandage.

18. Think of piecing a quilt as you position the bandage on his leg.

19. See a doctor, and another doctor, and another doctor.

20. Scream for help to gods you don’t believe in.

21. Dream of hordes of tiny insects and creatures crawling out of the leaking blisters.

22. Cover the creatures with more bandages.

23. Panic.

24. Repeat.

Slice of Life Tuesday

An Ordinary Day

            This was one of those days when not a lot happens, but it feels like I’ve been very busy.

            First, I had to rebandage my husband’s leg (a minor problem, but a great inconvenience, and a little too gross to go into).

            Next I had a lot of to-dos: e-mails to arrange our annual family holiday dinner with nieces and nephews; e-mail to a friend I’ve been out of touch with; e-mail to set up my next women’s meeting. Then Facebook posts on news events (a baseball story, a story about a high school student in South Carolina body-slammed to the floor by a school police officer).

            Lunch.

            An appointment at the Apple Store to untangle my iPad, where it took 20 minutes to update the iOS.

            Shopped for dinner on my way home, but before I could start I needed to rebandage my husband’s leg – and when I wanted to take a photo of my husband’s leg to show his doctor, I realized I’d left my iPad in the store (I hope). Yes, it was there, lucky again (I’d lost the iPad, just weeks after getting it, in a park in Hawaii, and found it lying on the grass), and I rushed back home.

            Made honey-Dijon salmon from a Food Network recipe.

            And now settled in watching the first game of the World Series with my Mets against Kansas City. It’s tied 3-3 in the 7th inning right now. Anything could happen.

Update: Alas, after 5 hours, 9 minutes, the Mets lost. They came from behind, then went ahead after being tied. But after being tied again, they lost in the 14th inning, 5-4.

Fire!

Fire!

            Have you ever seen a lamp in your living room burst into flames? This happened to me last night, as I was about to turn out the lights and go to bed. There was a loud crack, the bulb burned out, and flames shot out of the switch.

            I was terrified. My first thought: I should swat at the flames to try and smother them, but the only thing in my hand was a newspaper. Some rational corner of my brain kept me from using it. I tried to think what else was in reach. But the flames died out. It was only about 10 seconds, but my heart was racing for some time afterwards.

            Even though the fire was out, I frantically pulled out the plug, and moved the lamp away from the outlet, as though mere propinquity could reignite the fire.

            And the smell. Whatever it was that burned at the base of the bulb and in the lamp’s switch smelled awful. I put the lamp out by my apartment building’s service elevator, but the smell that lingered in the apartment and the adrenaline of fear and action kept me awake for hours.

            Here’s the singed lamp. Looks harmless, doesn’t it.

What’s in a Name?

            I must have called her by the wrong name. She looked just like Linda at my old school, but in the new school she was Joyce. I almost never call people by their name because their faces shoot poisoned arrows when I get it wrong. There were always at least two Lindas and Nancys and Joyces in every school. If I didn’t have a name, no one could forget it or remember it. They would often spell my name wrong, with a “y” or a “j” instead of an “i.” I never met anyone with my name until I was 30 years old. It was exciting, like proof that I existed. A friend’s daughter was always one of two or three Sarahs in her class. When she went to college, she decided to change to a nickname. She polled everyone she knew and settled on Sadie, a name common among my grandparents. How does it feel to have a common name? When I first went to eastern Europe, there were three other Sonias at the conference, with the “i” and with the “j,” even a Sanya. I had slipped into a slot that fit exactly. My name had become a tribe. My daughter’s name, Christie, can be spelled at least six different ways, and it’s not short for anything. She hates to see it spelled wrong, as though she is someone else. A name has power, but to be nameless is freeing. A name ties you down to one meaning, an anchor to safety, but also a weight to drag you down.

Slice of Life Tuesday

Do Men Have a Better Sense of Humor, 
or Just a Weirder One?

            Recently my husband and I were discussing what makes something funny, and whether something being funny could ever be offensive. He thought that if something was truly funny, it couldn’t be offensive, and someone who thought it wasn’t funny had no sense of humor. I thought that it always depended on where one was in relation to the object of the joke.

            Came a case study today. My husband tells me the following joke someone told him once.

            Mickey Mantle takes his teammates Whitey Ford and Billy Martin hunting in his home state of Oklahoma. Mickey thinks the best hunting will be on his friend’s land, so they go to the friend’s house, where Mickey says he should go in and ask  permission, as a courtesy, since he knows the friend will say yes, while Whitey and Billy stay outside.

            Mickey and his friend exchange greetings, and the friend says that of course they can hunt on his property. But Mickey could do him a favor. The friend’s favorite horse is old and sick, and really should be put down, but he just doesn’t have the heart to shoot him himself. Could Mickey shoot the horse for him? Of course, Mickey says.

            When he joins Whitey and Billy, however, he decides to play a little joke on them. “That son of a bitch,” he reports, “he won’t let us hunt here. I don’t know why he’s being such a shit. I’ve got to get even with him.”

            He points to the old horse in the paddock next to the house. “That’s his favorite horse. I’ve got a good mind to shoot him.”

            “Don’t do that,” Whitey says. “We can go hunt somewhere else.”

            “No,” Mickey insists. “I’m going to shoot his horse.” And while he and Whitey continue to argue over whether Mickey will shoot the horse, they hear gunshots. Billy is shooting the friend’s cattle.

            I grimaced. How stupid, I thought. Yet my husband was laughing. “Of course,” I said, “that is only funny if you think men are really stupid.” Yes, my husband said, still chuckling.

            “And what’s really crazy,” I continued, “is that men tell this joke about each other, and they think it’s funny!” My husband laughed even more, since apparently what I’d said was really funny

Tuesday Slice of Life

I love small world connections; they make me feel like I am part of a community wherever I go. Two of them happened yesterday evening in one place.

     I’d gone to an author reading and interview at a bookstore in Brooklyn. Shortly before it started, a black woman sat at the end of the first row; she looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. And just as the author was being introduced, a woman with curly blonde hair sat in the empty seat next to me. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t say anything because the author was beginning to read.

     As soon as the event was over, we turned to each other and almost simultaneously said, “Were you at the Voice?” Then she said, “Are you Sonia?” I nodded, and said, “I remember your last name, but not your first,” and she said, “Barbara.” She had been an intern for one of the investigative reporters, more than 30 years ago, and we hadn’t seen each other since, though it turned out she’s later been hired by the husband of a college friend of mine.

     And the woman at the end of the first row? We’d met at a writers’ event a couple of weeks earlier and, we learned last night, she’s a colleague of a good friend of mine.

     So, yes, we are no more than a few links away from everyone else on the planet, and only one or two from those in our own city.

Thank you, Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon

Thank you, JP Howard, and Samiya Bashir, and the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon for your organizing and energy and support. I have not written anything for weeks, then today was the August Salon, and this is what came out. I will write more, and more often.

How to Connect When You Do Not Feel Connected

1. Connect  one thought to another thought.

2. Connect one thought to an action.

3. Conect one action to another action.

4. Connect yourself to yourself.

5. Connect your pain to your fear.

6. Connect your fear to what feeds it.

7. Disconnect your fear from its source.

8. Bypass your pain with a dream.

9. Chase your dream into the underbrush.

10. Track your dream with stealth and love.

11. Ambush your dream as it steals away.

12. Hide from your dream.

13. Let your dream find you.

14. Connect yourself to your dream.

15. Connect others to your dream, one by one, until you are multitudes.

Dancing at the Reunion

Dancing

            The music started, a little jazzy. Where was the Motown? Where was the disco? The punk? It was my 50th college reunion, and this was the Saturday night dance.

            My college had had two weekly dances. Friday night was folk dancing, Saturday night was the twist party. I loved rock and roll, had loved it from the moment I heard it on the radio years before, on "Jukebox Saturday Night." I loved it even though my mother was soft on Elvis Presley -- she didn't denounce him like all the other grownups did. I loved the syncopated rhythm, the rough yet crooning sound, the harmonies.

            I only knew how to dance by watching "American Bandstand." No one ever asked me out on a date, so I didn't get much practice. Instead, I would hold onto the doorknob of my bedroom, as though it was my partner's hand, and try out steps.

            Now, at college, the twist was hot (go, Chubby Checker). I was shy, didn't go anywhere by myself, but my roommate, from Long Island, was brash and had enough attitude for both of us. The twist was the quintessential lone dance -- you could have a partner, but you didn't need one. I would stand near the wall, but still feel part of the dance floor, and twist away. It was easy, and I felt wrapped up inside the music, the rhythm (Ray Charles, "Hit the Road, Jack"; Del Shannon, "Runaway"; the Shirelles; the Everly Brothers). I almost didn't want a boy to ask if we could  dance, because then I would become attached to him, I would have to talk, ask questions, wonder what he would want to do next or if he would want to take me outside, and that was the part of dating I knew nothing about.

            More than 50 years later, I was no longer shy. Dancing was still the abandon of movement, rhythm taking over my feet, arms, hips. I no longer needed to stay at the edgeofthe dance floor, though I couldn’t be the first one. A woman, maybe in her 50s, danced onto the floor, and then I leaped up. I could be second.  (She said, maybe a little gleefully, she was humiliating her son. He remained in the darkness, a beer in hand.) We danced in the old rock and roll style, alone but but oriented around each other. The couple from the 1950s class joined us, with a friend. I was glad that the first people out on the floor were the oldest.

Slice of Life, 50th Reunion

Reunion

            There are so many slices I could report from this past weekend. It was my 50th college reunion, two days packed with events, weather, people I knew, people whose names I vaguely remembered, people whose faces were definitely not familiar. But the main reason I was there was Saturday night’s Div Dance. (It’s too complicated to explain wht “Div” means, so I won’t.)

            Saturday morning and into midafternoon, it rained. A deluge. A big tent on the central lawn, the venue for our meals, and the dance, was on ground that had become a quagmire. So the dance was relocated to the theater building.

            After dinner I wandered down to the theater, fireflies flickering right and left. Outside the building half a dozen people had gathered, one woman with a bottle of wine on a folding chair. (Was the chair hers?) We were waiting for the sound system to be set up. I chatted with a man from the class of ’75, a faculty member around his generation, and a graduate from 2007. But I was impatient for music, so I and the ’07 graduate went inside to see what was the holdup.

            The theater stage was the main floor to the left of the entrance, with stadium seats rising to the right. Near the back wall was a table with an array of electronic equipment. A faculty member I knew from New York was testing the fog machine; it worked. He was waiting for the  DJ to arrive with the computer.

            The DJ turned out to be a lawyer from one of the 1990s classes. She was wearing a blue T-shirt that proclaimed: "Antioch College Bootcamp for the Revolution." She needed a min-in cable, but no one knew what that was. She was handed a USB cable, but that didn’t work. There was a lot of unplugging and switching of cables. The soundboards looked like the control panels of a small plane, much more complicated than a pile of vinyl, stacked on a turntable. I wandered over to the seats and talked to a graduate from the mid-’50s.

            Finally the music started, a little jazzy. Where was Motown? Where was disco? Where was punk? The empty dance floor lit up, but I couldn’t be the first one. A woman, maybe in her 50s, danced onto the floor, and then I leaped up. I could be second. We danced in the old rock and roll style, alone but but oriented around each other. The couple from the 1950s class joined us, with a friend. I was glad that the first people out on the floor were the oldest.

Tuesday's Slice of Life, a little late

Yesterday I took part in the Urban Librarians Unite Read-In, a movement to promote and support public libraries and also protest budget cuts to public libraries. People read for 15 minutes at a stretch for 24 hours straight. (Yes, all night too, and that's when people can read their favorite porn and erotica.)

This year it was next to City Hall, as the City Council is currently debating the budget. I read from 5 to 5:15 (from Carola Dibbell's new, and first, novel, The Only Ones, which I highly recommend), and hung around for an hour altogether, before and after. The scene around the read-in was almost as fascinating as the readings and readers themselves.

There were two tents, one for the reader (with mike), the one with three rows of seats for anyone who wanted to stay and listen. I was there around the time people were getting off from work. Most people walked right by between the tents. Some looked over to see what was going on, a few paused to read the signs, but some walked on as though they didn't notice a thing out of the ordinary. A few did detour around the audience tent -- they noticed, and didn't want to interfere.

The woman before me read all of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, and then something from a book about Beatrix Potter and her garden, to fill out her 15 minutes. The person after me was a father and his three-year-old daughter. The father read from Dr. Seuss's I Wish I Had Duck Feet, and the last word of every fourth (or so) line was supplied by the little girl, who had obviously memorized the whole story. Once she realized that the mike magnified her voice, she could hardly wait to shout her word into the mike. And when we all laughed, she was even happier. I'm sure she will demand a microphone for her next birthday.

Friday Slices of Life

I

            In the Village for an errand this afternoon. Walking down Greenwich Avenue, I passed the school yard at P.S. 41. Boys and girls were running around and playing and shouting, but the gate to the street was closed because school hadn’t let out yet. Still, many parents were massed around the gate, waiting. (Did they want to get their children home quickly so they could leave for the long weekend?)

            Twenty or so minutes later, I walked back past the school yard. The gates were now open, and lines were forming at the Delicioso ice cart (mango, coconut, rainbow) and at the ice cream truck. Leaving town would have to wait for snacktime.

II

            At 12th Street, the sky over the West Village looked ominous, but looking north, it seemed like it was clear over midtown. But when I got off the train at Columbus Circle (yet another errand), it was cloudy there, too. Venders were already selling “ummm-brellas,” and there was moisture in the air. But there was blue sky further north. And when I got up to 112th Street, it had clouded up there, too, yet still further north, it was clearing. Was I bringing the clouds with me as I traveled uptown?

The Perfect Game (Slice of Life Tuesday)

(This Slice of Life is almost 60 years old.)

            Monday, October 8, 1956, I was in my ninth-grade home room at the end of the day. The assistant principal, as he was announcing school bus departures over the P.A. system, also noted that in that afternoon’s World Series game, Don Larsen of the Yankees had so far pitched a perfect game.

            The word “perfect” clicked in my mind. Was there actually something a human being could do that was “perfect”?

            As soon as I got home, 15-20 minutes later, I went immediately to my parents’ bedroom, where the TV was, and turned the channel selector until I found the channel broadcasting the game. (There were only about five channels then, and no remote.) I saw the final three outs that climaxed that amazing 27 up, 27 down accomplishment. The catcher, who I didn’t yet know was Yogi Berra, ran toward the pitcher and jumped into his arms. There was only one camera shot, middle distance, probably from the level of the press box.

            With that perfect game, baseball cemented itself in my heart. 

(MLB.com has a short video of the highlights and the end of the game, with interviews with the participants and the announcer of the game.)

Slice of Life Tuesday (it actually happened on Monday)

Subway Sight

    A mother gets on the #1 train with her little boy, about 4 or 5 years old. He is hungrily licking on a paper cup of rainbow ice. A woman sitting next to me gets up so he can sit down, since it's obvious he is paying way more attention to that rainbow ice than to keeping his balance on the moving train. He is slowly sipping melted ice from the edges of the cup, then pushing the ice up from the bottom. "Look," he says, "it's getting higher." Is he pretending that there's more ice in the cup even as he sucks up what's there? His mother suggests that if he's eating the ice, shouldn't there be less? No, he shakes his head, "it's getting higher."
    The boy runs his fingers over the ice. "See, there are different colors," he points out to those of us sitting nearby. "It's a rainbow!" Then he licks his finger. His mother suggests that he not eat his ice by way of his finger. He goes back to sucking melted bits of ice.
    At 59th Street, mother and child get off. So we'll never know how long it took that little boy to finish his ice, or what he said when it was all gone.

Poem a Day, #22 (looking back)

Looking Back

Looking back, she could only find the names of

Towns her grandparents left.

Khotin, Vitebsk, Lodz.

The Russian Empire held them all

A hundred years ago.

Looking ahead, those towns ended up

In new countries,

Ukraine, Belarus, Poland.

All those lands, then and now,

Saw her grandparents as interlopers,

Jews, Christ-killers, usurers.

Looking back, she knew she’d missed her chance

To learn their stories.

The little she thought she knew

Was sometimes wrong.

The cigarette smuggler fleeing the “old country”

To avoid police

Owned the cigarette factory

Fleeing the “old country”

To avoid paying a cigarette tax.

Why else did they come?

What was it like in the towns they left?

What did they think of their new country?

Looking back, there were too many questions,

Forever unanswered.

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem-a-Day, #21 (words coined by Shakespeare)

Champion Critic Does Not Grovel

Champion Critic felt out of sorts.

Her latest review had garnered no comments

On her blog, while

Attracting hostile backlash from

Writers she had judged harshly in the past.

Champion Critic had written novels

Over the years , which, she thought,

Gave her the right to judge her peers,

Writers in her own genre of lit. fic.

As well as writers of romance and fantasy.

Champion Critic felt out of sorts, for

None of her writer or critic friends

Had come to her defense.

The critics of her criticism had her all wrong.

They misread her judgments as dis, not sis-

Terly wish that they do better, as

Champion Critic knew shey could

She never took on a work

She knew was bad.

She never made demands she knew

Could not be met.

Champion Critic reread her latest work,

Persuaded still that she was right.

Critics and friends alike could be assured

That history will judge her

Decisions to be correct.

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #20 (across the sea)

Across the Sea

Two ships sail west across the Atlantic.

The first carries what the shipowners call "cargo," men, women, children stolen from their homes and turned into property, a notion propped up by the shipowners' religion.

The second carries passengers, many escapees from empires Russian, Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, men, women, children fleeing pogroms, poverty, hatred for their religion, hatred embedded in a religion descended from theirs.

The first ship carries "slaves," a word for people forcibly bought and sold, who some history books tell us had a better life in the United States than in their "primitive," "warlike" villages back home, who other history books tell us came from civilizations older than Europe's.

The second ship carries "immigrants," a word for people voluntarily leaving their homes to, as history books tell us, "seek a better life."

The people on the first ship have skin colors from brown to black. Their "owners," with their paler skin, assign them a different "race" to justify their "ownership" of these human beings.

The people on the second ship have skin colors from pale to tan. They have different religions, come from different countries, but the pale "natives" assign them many "races" to justify keeping them outside the privileges of those who came here earlier.

The passengers on the second ship are greeted in New York Harbor by a statue whose inscription welcomes the "tired," the "poor," the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

The statue does not welcome the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free on the first ship. The statue did not exist when their ship sailed into New York Harbor. When the ships ceased to sail west with their human "cargo," the people consigned to slavery continued to bear children, still called property by their "owners."

A great war ends the institution of slavery, but many of the people freed are kept enslaved by terror and their former owners' power and "tradition."

The children and grandchildren of the people on the second ship melt into the privilege of whiteness even if they do not acquire the privilege of wealth. The melting pot absorbs their culture and heritage and turns it into novelty.

The children and grandchildren of the people on the first ship, as people of color, are not allowed to melt into whiteness, although some do acquire the privilege of wealth.

Some unknown number whose lightness of skin does allow them to melt in, melt at the cost of losing their families of color and their heritage and culture.

Two ships sail west across the Atlantic, the skin color of their human cargoes imposing vastly different futures by forces beyond their control.

  http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

This feels a bit labored to me, like maybe it should be an essay rather than a poem. I don't know.