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Featured Poem: The Immigrant in 1900

NLAPWby NLAPW

By Nancy Haskett
Modesto Branch, California

 

The Immigrant in 1900

knows steerage and squalor,

suspenders, shirts of heavy ticking;

labors in a Lower East Side sweatshop

filled with whirring machines, smell of new leather;

he dines on potatoes, cabbage, bread,

an occasional apple or turnip,

strolls on Sunday past Delancey Street delicatessens

offering pastrami, knishes, borscht, bagels,

while pushcarts proffer pickles, baskets, door hinges and more;

he walks down Mulberry Street to Chinatown

wanders among live goats, pig carcasses, perfume of incense.

He dreams the American dream –

the dream of men who stay at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,

the ones who smoke cigars, use brass spittoons,

wear gold fobs across silken vests,

bowler hats and stiff white collars,

spat-style boots with buttons on the side –

the shoes he cobbles each day but can’t afford.

He dreams of the Adriatic Sea,

cerulean coastal waters of the home he left in Ancona

before the Passage, before Ellis Island;

in his sleep, he takes a spoonful of brodetto,

tastes the oil, garlic, saffron, the pecorino cheese,

walks along the Italian beach in bright sunlight –

opens his eyes in New York tenement

as winter snow falls,

rolls over

dreams again.

12 comments

  2. Andrea Walker says:

    Excellent poem, Nancy, with so much realistic detail. Your poem resonates because of today’s immigration issue. Also, I just finished reading “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins, a novel based on well-researched facts. So much to learn!

  6. Claire Massesy says:

    How often in our history did the homesick immigrant dream of home?
    Will the American dream be realized?
    This poem is a poignant reminder of all the challenges faced by those who leave their native land.

    Claire Massey
    NLAPW Poetry Editor

  7. Calder Lowe says:

    My Grandmother arrived in the late 1800s from the Lofoten Islands in Norway and worked for three years as an indentured maid in a large home in Manhattan. She went on to marry my grandfather Thor and to open a Scandinavian delicatessen in Brooklyn all while raising four children. My mother-in-law, Antoinette, was born in Sicily and labored in a NYC sweatshop alongside her mother. At 11, she was tied to the chair in front of the sewing machine so as to prevent her from wandering off. She went on to attend a doctoral program at Syracuse University and to win the Outstanding Reading Teacher of the Year Award in NY the year she retired.

    These strong, fierce women were immigrants and your poem, Nancy, bears witness to the spirit of our forebears.

  9. mary gardner says:

    I enjoyed the vivid pictorial content, its
    truthfulness. Important to remind of ourselves of immigration in generation after generation. I think the poet could have
    used a little less repeat of first letters
    of words.

  11. Virginia Nygard says:

    Well done. No, our streets weren’t paved with gold. Today, we’re lucky if they get paved with tar, and if bridges are inspected when needed. Yes, greed and ostentatious displays of wealth still abound. And we still have the poor.

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