Morning

There in the darkness

is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

a black flame that danced in daylight

impassive policemen

with dead women at their feet

barefoot girls with handsome skin

leaping from the ninth floor

holding hands.

Exes mark their windows.

From a wax cylinder,

a survivor’s voice rings like a bell - 

‘…but they should have had some regard for our lives’.

Yeah, but where the fuck is Galicia?

How among boxes of burning skirt trims

a colony of souls

sublimed away like vapour;

how against the locked door

and thunderhead of flame

the spitting fat of bodies

gave way to a boisterous blaze.

- devoured, pressed, rendered -

swallowed - never to celebrate

a snowfall of ash - never to love

burning human hair - children unborn

See them, reader - really look -

a hundred girls

screaming in flame-light

sinews incalculable,

dresses igniting,

the whole monstrous pack

finding its own gravity

ecstatic eyes the size of chestnuts

ecstatic eyes of boiling snow…

My iPhone softly trills

its first alarm.

I strum it into silence so as

not to wake my wife;

strum Wikipedia away,

begin to contemplate the day.