Mary Stike
Florence and Delia
I am grown from women
grounded by work.
My Grandma Florence left the family farm
in Addison, New York in 1917
to live in Rochester.
The first winter her father
brought her a box of potatoes
for comfort and survival.
She worked in factories, munitions, then perfume,
and as a clerk in McCurdy’s department store
and later at the Rochester Post Office.
She was proud of her brass Post Office pin
a pony express carrier, the steed’s legs fashioned wide
in full gallop, the boyish rider with his wide felt hat
and leather shoulder bag.
She wore it pinned high on her broad fronted housedress,
or on a hand knit cardigan sweater.
My father’s mother Delia
was sent by her father from their home
on the Tonawanda reservation,
to Carlisle Indian School.
He was a track laborer on the New York Central Railroad,
had no way to care for his children when their mother died
giving birth to Delia.
As a young teenager, she came to the city
to work as a domestic with her girlfriend Evelyn TwoGuns.
They kept house and cared for the children
of the rich white families on St. Paul Boulevard.
At family dinners
Florence and Delia told us stories
of those hard first years in Rochester,
before Grandpa Frederick came to be an auto worker
or Grandpa John drove his hack for weddings and funerals.
And now, my life,
a shrine to these women
in sepia-toned
photos in golden oak frames.
I say their names,
set my stubby candle before them.
Florence uses her kitchen shears to trim the wick,
Delia’s strong brown fingers strike the match
and they light the flame.
Boiling Point, 1964
At fourteen, I read Steinbeck, Salinger,
John Knowles’ A Separate Peace,
searched graveyards for history
and started drinking coffee.
That was the summer of Rochester’s race riots,
days and nights of fighting, curfew and looting,
I could hear the sirens through
the open window in my bedroom all night.
At home we were restless, on edge, waiting
and watchful like before a thunderstorm
that promises severity and damage in its fury.
The riots erupted, forcing us to become aware
of what we had avoided, refused to see
on the slummy streets Dad would not drive
after dark, or if he had to, he would say,
“Girls, lock your doors.”
The simmer of discontent heated up,
and boiled over for three days, its stink
covering the city, it entered the forced-open windows
of our houses we had thought were safe,
surrounded our supper table where we talked of nothing else.
How could this happen here? What does it mean?
Is it that bad here, like the South?
And we knew it was wretched
in the black neighborhoods
that we held so far away from our existence.
Yeah, we saw the poverty, but could not fathom
its desperation.
My education that summer:
not stories of the Okies in the 30’s or spoiled adolescent boys
in prep school, so fascinating but foreign to me;
in my hometown, the storm was rumbling
up and down the streets and through our walls.
We could not escape or hide our knowledge
anymore.
Our whole family came of age.
The Hit Songs of 1953
The back door stood open all the day,
wispy breezes passing in through the screen
and rushing across the kitchen floor.
My mother might be in the basement cool
doing laundry, upstairs straightening bedrooms
or sitting with a cup of coffee
on the back steps.
Our kitchen was awash
with Arthur Godfrey or the soaps on the radio.
I was napping but still able to hear
the consistent hum of her latest favorite song,
The Tennessee Waltz or Perry Como’s
Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.
Her music was a promise of a good day,
a loving blanket pulled carefully
up and over my sleepy self.
Her routine of joy held me,
furrowed deep and unmoving,
an anchor that I would never lose.
I still do my morning chores
with the radio on, singing,
an echo of her contented essence,
strong and sweet and pretty.
She passed her star to my eye,
the eye she shaped to see the world.
I hear her songs with the scent of lilacs,
oil soap or line-dried cotton clothes;
I breathe deeply and
feel her presence in the legion
of mothers we all carry.
Mary Imo-Stike identifies as an American Indian, and a feminist. She worked "non-traditional" jobs as a rail worker, construction plumber, boiler operator and gas line inspector. Now retired from work-life, she obtained an MFA in Poetry from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 2015, and is currently the poetry co-editor of HeartWood Literary Magazine. Her work has been published in Antietam Review, Phoebe, The Pikeville Review, Appalachian Heritage and Cactus Heart.
Florence and Delia
I am grown from women
grounded by work.
My Grandma Florence left the family farm
in Addison, New York in 1917
to live in Rochester.
The first winter her father
brought her a box of potatoes
for comfort and survival.
She worked in factories, munitions, then perfume,
and as a clerk in McCurdy’s department store
and later at the Rochester Post Office.
She was proud of her brass Post Office pin
a pony express carrier, the steed’s legs fashioned wide
in full gallop, the boyish rider with his wide felt hat
and leather shoulder bag.
She wore it pinned high on her broad fronted housedress,
or on a hand knit cardigan sweater.
My father’s mother Delia
was sent by her father from their home
on the Tonawanda reservation,
to Carlisle Indian School.
He was a track laborer on the New York Central Railroad,
had no way to care for his children when their mother died
giving birth to Delia.
As a young teenager, she came to the city
to work as a domestic with her girlfriend Evelyn TwoGuns.
They kept house and cared for the children
of the rich white families on St. Paul Boulevard.
At family dinners
Florence and Delia told us stories
of those hard first years in Rochester,
before Grandpa Frederick came to be an auto worker
or Grandpa John drove his hack for weddings and funerals.
And now, my life,
a shrine to these women
in sepia-toned
photos in golden oak frames.
I say their names,
set my stubby candle before them.
Florence uses her kitchen shears to trim the wick,
Delia’s strong brown fingers strike the match
and they light the flame.
Boiling Point, 1964
At fourteen, I read Steinbeck, Salinger,
John Knowles’ A Separate Peace,
searched graveyards for history
and started drinking coffee.
That was the summer of Rochester’s race riots,
days and nights of fighting, curfew and looting,
I could hear the sirens through
the open window in my bedroom all night.
At home we were restless, on edge, waiting
and watchful like before a thunderstorm
that promises severity and damage in its fury.
The riots erupted, forcing us to become aware
of what we had avoided, refused to see
on the slummy streets Dad would not drive
after dark, or if he had to, he would say,
“Girls, lock your doors.”
The simmer of discontent heated up,
and boiled over for three days, its stink
covering the city, it entered the forced-open windows
of our houses we had thought were safe,
surrounded our supper table where we talked of nothing else.
How could this happen here? What does it mean?
Is it that bad here, like the South?
And we knew it was wretched
in the black neighborhoods
that we held so far away from our existence.
Yeah, we saw the poverty, but could not fathom
its desperation.
My education that summer:
not stories of the Okies in the 30’s or spoiled adolescent boys
in prep school, so fascinating but foreign to me;
in my hometown, the storm was rumbling
up and down the streets and through our walls.
We could not escape or hide our knowledge
anymore.
Our whole family came of age.
The Hit Songs of 1953
The back door stood open all the day,
wispy breezes passing in through the screen
and rushing across the kitchen floor.
My mother might be in the basement cool
doing laundry, upstairs straightening bedrooms
or sitting with a cup of coffee
on the back steps.
Our kitchen was awash
with Arthur Godfrey or the soaps on the radio.
I was napping but still able to hear
the consistent hum of her latest favorite song,
The Tennessee Waltz or Perry Como’s
Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.
Her music was a promise of a good day,
a loving blanket pulled carefully
up and over my sleepy self.
Her routine of joy held me,
furrowed deep and unmoving,
an anchor that I would never lose.
I still do my morning chores
with the radio on, singing,
an echo of her contented essence,
strong and sweet and pretty.
She passed her star to my eye,
the eye she shaped to see the world.
I hear her songs with the scent of lilacs,
oil soap or line-dried cotton clothes;
I breathe deeply and
feel her presence in the legion
of mothers we all carry.
Mary Imo-Stike identifies as an American Indian, and a feminist. She worked "non-traditional" jobs as a rail worker, construction plumber, boiler operator and gas line inspector. Now retired from work-life, she obtained an MFA in Poetry from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 2015, and is currently the poetry co-editor of HeartWood Literary Magazine. Her work has been published in Antietam Review, Phoebe, The Pikeville Review, Appalachian Heritage and Cactus Heart.