Suzanna Schlemm © 2025
by Holly Iglesias
Selvage, 1911
They say the girls that day like every day were locked in on the eighth floor of the factory, and that despite their different languages their affection for one another had grown—sharing a sandwich, plucking lint from a braid, offering sprigs of lilac.
They say a cigar butt was smoldering in the scraps under the cutting table, and that when the smoke began to rise it was too late, and that knowing they must jump, the girls kissed each other’s cheeks, ran for the windows in pairs, and leapt.
No nets below to catch them, just the crowd, gawking upward, mute at the sight of them. They say they resembled bolts of cloth tumbling from the sky, skirts, aprons, sleeves, some blue, some white, girls unfurling, tumbling, clutching hands.
Holly Iglesias is the author of Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, Souvenirs of a Shrunken World, and Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.