Poetry Friday/Slice of Life March Challenge: Marking the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Poetry Friday is hosted by Mary Lee at http://readingyear.blogspot.com/

The March 2011 Slice of Life Story Challenge sponsored by

http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/  

    

One hundred year ago today, 146 young women perished in a terrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City.  Most of these women were between the age of 16 and 20 - and their terrible  deaths became the catalyst for change in workplace conditions for factory workers all over the country.  The poem below speaks to the horror those who were there that day endured - a reminder to us today that we must never forget that the genesis of the union movement was to ensure that workers in any industry deserve the sanctity of a safe workplace and the protection of laws to safeguard their rights.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

by Robert Phillips

I, Rose Rosenfeld, am one of the workers
who survived. Before the inferno broke out,
factory doors had been locked by the owners,

       to keep us at our sewing machines,
       to keep us from stealing scraps of cloth.
       I said to myself, What are the bosses doing?
       I knew they would save themselves.

I left my big-button-attacher machine,
climbed the iron stairs to the tenth floor
where their offices were. From the landing window

       I saw girls in shirtwaists flying by,
       Catherine wheels projected like Zeppelins
       out open windows, then plunging downward,
       sighing skirts open parasols on fire.

I found the big shots stuffing themselves
into the freight elevator going to the roof.
I squeezed in. While our girls were falling,

       we ascended like ashes. Firemen
       yanked us onto the next-door roof.
       I sank to the tarpaper, sobbed for
       one-hundred forty-six comrades dying

or dead down below. One was Rebecca,
my only close friend, a forewoman kind to workers.
Like the others, she burned like a prism.

       Relatives of twenty-three victims later
            Brought suits.
       Each family was awarded seventy-five dollars.
       It was like the Titanic the very next year-
       No one cared about the souls in steerage.

Those doors were locked, too, a sweatshop at sea.
They died due to ice, not fire. I live in
Southern California now. But I still see

       skirts rippling like parachutes,
       girls hit the cobblestones, smell smoke,
       burnt flesh, girls cracking like cheap buttons,
       disappearing like so many dropped stitches.

This is a wonderful documentary based on interviews with the survivors which I will be sharing with my students today: