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"Again, I see the Dawn", "Victoriana", & "Ways of Entering a Dream" by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro



AGAIN, I SEE THE DAWN


of my childhood when women stood 

lonely in Edward Hopper windows, 

still in their full slips, or already 

in flowered housecoats. 


They took in these moments 

after their husbands left for work 

and before their children woke up 

clamoring for those tiny boxes of cereal,

perforated for easy opening, 

the milk poured 

right into the boxes’ wax paper lining, 

a miracle—

only a spoon to wash. 


Soon the laundryman would deliver

the wet wash and each side window

opened, rusted pullies creaking

as clothes were clothespinned 

to ropes that spanned alleyways in arcs. 


The women shopped wearing one 

of their three weekday dresses, 

stockings rolled over rubber bands

just below the knees. 


Tasks, tasks, tasks, then dusk

when front windows opened

again and women leaned out, 

shouting down to their children 

Get upstairs

in Italian, in Greek, in Yiddish, 

in German, in brogues, in dialects. 


But at dawn, all spoke silence. 



VICTORIANA


How imprisoned she is by the high neck 

of her Gibson Girl blouse, 

the edge of lace beneath the chin, 

the yoke, the puffed sleeves that taper 

to wrist flounces. She can’t wait

to take off the swan-bill corset

that forces her torso into an S-shape. 


She hasn’t patience to put her dark hair 

up in a perfect pompadour

nor does she sport even one strategic waterfall curl. 


I wish you could hear her belt out in her thick Cockney, 

Lottie Collins, she ’ad no sense. 

She bought a fiddle for eighteen pence. 


She was no suffragette, but she bought

and ran a millinery shop, a candy store, 

owned four large rental houses and birthed three kids. 


My daughter, before you empty my house

someday and decide you don’t want a sepia 

framed photo of a woman you never met, 

before this photo lands in an antique shop

and a customer tries to get a few bucks knocked off 

because the white nicks in the frame 

reveal that it’s a faux mahogany finish 

painted over plaster, I want to introduce you

to your great-grandmother. 

Meet Ada Bloom. 



WAYS OF ENTERING A DREAM 


You can waltz into a wobbling raindrop, 

become its iridescence, its sheen. 

You can be a figurine 

in a Fabergé egg

spirited out of a tsar’s palace

and into a glass case at the Met, 

yet you’re free to gallop into the ocean, 

that cradle of all raindrops. 


You can bumble into the basement

of bugaboos, a spider you only know

is there by the web that breaks on your face

and you don’t know if the spider is still in it

or dangling somewhere.  

It’s so Miss Muffet to be scared of spiders. 


You can fly into a dream, feel your spread-eagled self

lift off your mattress, the whoosh of wind, 

the squeeze in your stomach and your limbs

as you fly over the roofs of your childhood. 


Last night I entered my grandfather’s parlor

in his torn-down house on East Raynor Avenue. 

There he sat, plump and pale, his hair dandelion fluff. 

He told me his mixed-up story of the Gardener 

and the Three Bears, and laughed 

his rumbling unfiltered Camels laugh. 

His cheeks bloomed with a shot of schnapps.  




Rochelle Jewel Shapiro has published in the New York Times (Lives). Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, her short stories and poetry have been published widely. Her poetry collection, Death, Please Wait (Turtle Box Press). She teaches writing at UCLA Extension. http://rochellejshapiro.com @rjshapiro

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