August 2015
I grew up in Pennsylvania, just south of the Appalachian mountains. Our family often visited our Irish coal mining relatives in Schuylkill County. I earned an M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin, and have remained in the Midwest ever since. I currently teach high school African and Asian Cultural Studies, and am the advisor for the school poetry club and the District One break dancers. Some of my poems can be read on Verse Wisconsin Online. http://versewisconsin.org/issue113.html
Molly Maguire Was An Irish Woman
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Author's Note: A sizable portion of the men who were hanged as Molly Maguires in Schuylkill County were illiterate Irish speakers from the remote and impoverished western portion of County Donegal.
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I was a boy of Donegal and
the Barrony of Boylagh
that scoured seaboard discord
in the turning knot of fiddle steps and
the singing of the night
on sunlit days my friends and I
danced on naked granite
I couldn’t have read what’s on this page
but was fluent in the cleft and field
my words recalled our legends there
in the telling of the names
‘til my hunger scratched a tenant’s tune
that soon became lament
my landscape language useless
From the headland’s stunted swarth I sailed
across St. Brendan’s Sea
and on to Schuylkill County
where my bone wracked body curved and cleaved
snug to a mountain crevice
fingering her fossil shells
I spoke its salt blue tale
But the companies of coal and rail
spoke another kind of story
of industry and wages
my tongue was tied and teetering
I tripped above the blackened vein
seeking only fairness
Old Molly Maguire crept to town
her blood still trapped in the tightened fist
begging bread for babes
but mine was freed at the end of a rope
in America
America
my Molly’s heart beats here
Mythology of the Female
They’ve been mining this mountain for
years and now the creek
across the road has turned white
I mean as white as mother’s milk
fossil shells at last set free
to journey home
cataclysm of acid
from a catechism of business
my ovaries overflow
the riverbed
to the rhythm of the moon
defy the call of death
if I could grasp the weeping banshee
through my window
with her midnight waves pulled tight
under stroke of ivory brush.
I’d caress those earthy tresses
gather back its handfuls
mirror her face
in the calcium stars
Sunday mornings I fold
beneath the virgin
murmur her name
in cyclic count of ebony beads
Saint Mary of the Sea Star
cast in plaster
landlocked on a rocky swell
the Barrony of Boylagh
that scoured seaboard discord
in the turning knot of fiddle steps and
the singing of the night
on sunlit days my friends and I
danced on naked granite
I couldn’t have read what’s on this page
but was fluent in the cleft and field
my words recalled our legends there
in the telling of the names
‘til my hunger scratched a tenant’s tune
that soon became lament
my landscape language useless
From the headland’s stunted swarth I sailed
across St. Brendan’s Sea
and on to Schuylkill County
where my bone wracked body curved and cleaved
snug to a mountain crevice
fingering her fossil shells
I spoke its salt blue tale
But the companies of coal and rail
spoke another kind of story
of industry and wages
my tongue was tied and teetering
I tripped above the blackened vein
seeking only fairness
Old Molly Maguire crept to town
her blood still trapped in the tightened fist
begging bread for babes
but mine was freed at the end of a rope
in America
America
my Molly’s heart beats here
Mythology of the Female
They’ve been mining this mountain for
years and now the creek
across the road has turned white
I mean as white as mother’s milk
fossil shells at last set free
to journey home
cataclysm of acid
from a catechism of business
my ovaries overflow
the riverbed
to the rhythm of the moon
defy the call of death
if I could grasp the weeping banshee
through my window
with her midnight waves pulled tight
under stroke of ivory brush.
I’d caress those earthy tresses
gather back its handfuls
mirror her face
in the calcium stars
Sunday mornings I fold
beneath the virgin
murmur her name
in cyclic count of ebony beads
Saint Mary of the Sea Star
cast in plaster
landlocked on a rocky swell
©2015 Sylvia Cavanaugh