Ashes of A Factory

Thoughts on an imagined picture:

She stares out, her ashen cheeks grim,
from this other time she accuses in
the photograph, singed at the edges
roughly handled by time and flames.
Could her hands have touched this? No

they were already past— the past that
haunts the red-rimmed eye of my mind
as I read of their perishing. Have you ever
tasted the scorch of smoke on your tongue—
wrenching, ripping choking flavor and oh
you longed forlorn for cool sweet water to fill

your soul with light until you flew out
barred windows across the city spires to
meadows far beyond that azure sea you crossed,
your mother crossed, you a seed in her pouches
awaiting that first voyage into the water and she came
to this time, this life, this mother, this mother—

land and she set her fingers to work for the factory
her fingers numbed with pin pricks and ears ring
with screams of machines like her sisters
from so many other mothers and we are America
we are the sound of our screams as the fire eats

the way the men chewed through our time,
our lives, our virginal breath sucking for
air in the acrid stench of a foul sweatshop.

And they died, yes they died but are they not
dying still, reborn too many days in the souls
of the children stitching these shoes, those shirts?

We wear t-shirts now, not shirtwaists, but do
we stop killing the hungry with our greed?
No, we still burn them up, and wear their
skins upon our backs.