Dream in which we feel the fire coming

                                 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, March 25, 1911
 
 
Hear a fiddle wheeze and a dinner jacket is born. Hear
an orchestra and a hundred twenty-three girls are eating
un-ripened plums because now they can. Ask me how
well a name fits within a keyhole. Ask me how many
steps to an elevator. How many more in the dark. How
handsome you look in my hands, lined in linen. My heart
more likely to fall out my mouth than your watch out
the pocket, it’s like I stitched it with you in mind. Please
continue to wear it in spite of what you read. Shave the
ink off your face and it will not have happened. If you’re
concerned for our souls just know we crossed one another
first and before it went over the ledge the sin unspooled
itself into         one      white         weightless         thread.
 
 
 
 

Meg Cowen writes, paints and lives in the mountains of rural New Hampshire. She has been awarded the Elizabeth Curry Prize in poetry and has new writing in Passages North, Whiskey Island, PANK and interrupture.