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Readings for September 11, 2020: American Literature

1. Sonnet: The Ladies’ Home Journal (1984)

By Sandra Gilbert

The brilliant stills of food, the cozy

glossy, bygone life –mashed potatoes

posing as whipped cream , a neat mom

conjuring shapes from chaos, trimming the flame-

how we ached for all that,

that dance of love in the living room,

those paneled walls, that kitchen golden

as the inside of a seed: how we leaned

on those shiny columns of advice,

stroking the thank yous, the firm thigh, the wise

closets full of soap.

But even then

we knew it was the lies we loved, the lies

we wore like Dior coats, the clean-cut airtight

lie that laid out our lives in black and white.

(Please scroll down for your second poem.)

2. Ellis Island

By Joseph Brochac

Beyond the red brick of Ellis Island

where the two Slovak children

who became my grandparents

waited the long days of quarantine,

after leaving the sickness,

the old Empires of Europe,

a Circle Line ship slips easily

on its way to the island

of the tall woman, green

as dreams of forests and meadows

waiting for those who’d worked

a thousand years

yet never owned their own.

Like millions of others,

I too come to this island,

nine decades the answerer

of dreams.

Yet only part of my blood loves that memory.

Another voice speaks

of native lands

within this nation.

Lands invaded

when the earth became owned.

Lands of those who followed

the changing Moon,

knowledge of the seasons

in their veins.

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