Gold Mountain

This morning—jeweled mannequins

In glass in a frame. Shadows. Bergdorf’s, Saks

5th Avenue. A dress of Coco Chanel an opera

A ballet A world away—

                                                      Past—

Lower East Side. I hear louder & louder

Faster, faster Delancey, Mott Street, rising

Above the hum the spinning the throbbing of

The bobbin-winder. Sweatshop din. Women

From Hong Kong, Mong Kok, choked in demonic

Heat. The fiber-dust-heat. 12 hours seated: 

In shirt-waist-dust. No break no ventilation

& Stooped over her Singer, Mother

                                                       —I never saw her

—There.  Her satin-scented hands

The faint scent of ginger & almond—

Fingers quickly—feeding

                                    —the machine—fingers

Cutting up garments, fragments How

Could it have been each piece, pennies

To the tick of the clock?

                                                      I am 9—

Before there are words to know

What it means to be 9.  Happy & did not know

What being happy meant.  Or innocence—

Standing there, Midtown, outside

Harold’s Broadway & 14^th—where she

Did take me. Couture wool scraps. Ribbons.

Bullion fringes. Faux suede

                                                         Fabric— fleshy—

Appliqués. Mother’s eyes in the window

Flashing: looking in. Always constructing—

The same French coat, draping it over Jackie O’s

Shoulder; would it look runway-stunning

On me? On her shoulder too why not

—On hers? Denim In 12 metallic versions

I clutched My mother’s arm clutched them all the

Beaded Trimmings—

Followed her inside where eyes

                                                          Wide: dilated—lives—

Yards & yards piled high: bolts of

Dupioni, silk-shantung. Charmeuse.

I caressed them with my fingers. 

After my mother, fumbled into their folds

Fibers creases—infinite

                                        Dresses: of vermilion,

Gold. The palpable—

Hem—of the city Gum San Gold

Mountain America I was a child &

                                                          Everything! was there—

Mother’s taffeta dresses: hand-sewn

& Sewn—for me. Had I known, consigned

To the stars. And then even not

That, nothing better than those dresses that dressed

—Her wounds. What did I know? Only that her signature

Begins in the looping style: tiny embroidered ladybugs or

Butterflies swooping down

                                              From another—realm

I think I saw heaven—where she

Was, & for awhile & in her dreams: There-then

                                                                —As in : moments: silences

Precisely—

Sewn. Threaded: each seam, each

Crease. The recesses. Over & over the way

—A breath—is held; is

                                   —A sharp pain—stitched

                                                            —Unstitched—