THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

  I imagine that the leaves Which cling to their branches like Wigtails Who are even braver  in the stock-still snow Are the winged intubated  Who are holding on for dear life Caught in the life and breath struggle With the viral tempest That wants to erase them  from the landscape of the sky. And I imagine  hundreds of thousands of them Falling to their death Like the women of the Burning Triangle Shirtwaist Factory immigrants who screamed for their lives in the language of their Fatherland As they leaped from autumn red windows Their skirts billowing like failed parachutes As they landed on the pavement below Like shattered Schoenhut dolls  Tearing through the life nets of The rescuers who were unable to save them Who later that day carried them off to Misery Lane to be identified by Men and women Friends and family Who howled with grief  Because they were all denied a   Final kiss The touch of a soft warm hand And the chance to say goodbye.

 I spent hours yesterday reading my mom’s diary from 1940 and it was like taking the wheel of a Time Machine and eavesdropping on my 17-year-old mother.   It was meeting someone who I did not know existed.  Not like that.   She was stunningly happy, full of life with a close-knit group of friends who sat on stoops and childhood beds, gossiping and dreaming about love.  She went to the movies on Brooklyn’s Kings Highway every other day, seeing a double feature which she would review in a descriptive word or two.  She shopped for slips and girdles and the occasional pink agora mittens in Macy’s and often took my Grand mother out for “chinks” (Vernacular of the day) and ice cream sundaes. She ironed often.  Tidied up.  Fretted about passing history and all the other regents exams. (She always passed with flying colors). She fell in love over and over again with different boys like Stanley, Irving and Murray. She danced at parties, “heard” the radio, ...