Voices from the 9th Floor
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, New York
March 25th, 1911
Tomorrow morning,
when you come to see us
assembled like boxed shirts
in the morgue,
picture us in our hand-stitched
wedding gowns
breathing the free air
we once wished for.
Tell my fiance, I wanted
to sing loving lullabies
to our baby, a son
in my dreams. Tell him goodbye.
Tell my sister there’s no need
for her to scream
when in her dreams she jumps
from windows blazing,
waking instead upon her
blanketed soft bed.
Ask the man who locked the doors
to these rag-littered walls
and paid us for each sewn collar,
if he really believes the sum
of our lives so small
a piece, we’re worth only
seventy-five dollars.
And then let the girls know
who assemble in our seats,
when the inspectors came,
we too hid within the baskets
and bolts of linen,
quiet as mice, beneath
the unmanned workbenches,
seemingly well hidden.
Tell them to rise
and ask these would-be protectors
for pretty rag dolls to give
their even smaller sisters.
And let girls who sit,
obediently silent
at seven at night and
in the morning, Sing!
Like we girls do today
on this warm spring Saturday,
in chorus, pay pin-tucked
inside our plain dark aprons
and quitting time ten pieces away.
Singing because we still,
dream of going home
and falling exhausted
into weeping mothers arms.
Singing moments before
we clasp our calloused fingers
and leap arm-in-arm.
—Eli Cleary, Hamden, CT
