Poetry by Ellen LaFleche

              Lindsey Turner CC



​When I Jumped out the Window off the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory


I did not soar like a bird.
Never mind what the witness said.
I did not swoop with grace on currents of air.

I dropped straight down.
Think of a girl weighted with stones 
and thrown from a turret. 

I might have flown like a bird 
that moment when my shirtwaist billowed
and my sleeves filled with smoke.    
When fire flared from my shoulders.  

Never mind what the writer wrote.
The fire did not caress me,
did not kiss my scalp, my lovely legs. 
The flames made me scream.  The burning hurt.

Never mind what the witness heard.
I did not hum Christian hymns when I stepped from the ledge.
Did not sing songs of godly praise. 

I might have sung my sister’s name. Rosa.     
She worked the machine next to mine.
Rosa.  Her name was Rosa.    

Never mind what the writer wrote.
Rosie did not look like a soaring bird.
Even when her shirtwaist billowed.
Even when feathers drifted from her hat.   

Believe what my father said.
Rosa dropped like an anvil through the firemen’s net.
Our brother knew it was Rosa by the heel of her boot.

Our mother might have covered my shadow with her coat.   

​

Ellen LaFleche's poetry collection Walking into Lightning (Saddle Road Press, 2019) was written in the aftermath of her husband's death from ALS.  She has published three chapbooks.  Her awards include the Philbrick Poetry Prize, the Tor House Poetry Prize, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Poetry Prize, and the Joe Gouviea Outermost Poetry Prize, among others.  She is an assistant judge of the North Street Book Prize.

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