The Steerage

My father tells us about leaving,
how on the night they left he had
to bring goats next door in the moonlight.
Since he was not the youngest, he
couldn't wait pressed under a shawl
of coarse cotton close to his mother's
breast as she whispered "hurry". Her
ankles were swollen from ten babies.
Though she was only 30 her ankles were
swollen from ten babies, her lank hair

hung in strings under the babushka she
swore she would burn in New York
City. She dreamt others pointed and
snickered near the tenement, that a
neighbor borrowed the only bowl that
was her mother's and broke it. That
night they left, every move had to be
secret. In rooms there was no heat
in, no one put on muddy shoes or talked.
It was forbidden to leave, a law they

broke like the skin of ice on pails of milk.
Years from then, a daughter would write
that he didn't have a word for America
yet, that night of a new moon. His
mother pressed his brother to her, warned
everyone even the babies must not make
a sound. Frozen branches creaked. My
father shivered at men with guns near
straw roofs on fire. It took their old samovar,

every coin to bribe someone to take them
to the train. "Pretend to be sleeping," his
father whispered as the conductor moved
near. His mother stuffed cotton in the baby's
mouth. She held the mortar and pestle wrapped

in his quilt of feathers closer, told him
he would sleep in this soft blue in the years
ahead. But that night in steerage, he was
knocked sideways into the ribs of the boat so
sea sick he couldn't swallow the orange some
one threw from an upstairs bunk tho it was
bright as sun and smelled of a new country
he could only imagine though never how his
mother would become a stranger to herself
there, forget why they risked dogs and guns
to come