CURSING THE DEAD

CURSING THE DEAD

My grandmother cursed Cromwell daily. 

She cursed the Anglo-Saxons, then relented, 

saying their children were so like angels, 

with their blonde hair and blue eyes, 

so like angels, she said, tisk-tisking.

It was years before I realized she was cursing the long dead, 

those oppressors of the past who were her daily tormentors, 

they were the backdrop of her living history.  

Never forget, she said. Drougheda, she said, 

Barbados, Jamaica. They sold our children, she said.

In this way, I learned how the sins of oppression 

stained the generations. This is how I learned my history, 

through the rough lens of her curses and laments.

Even in San Francisco, immigrants were ostracized.

No Irish need apply. They formed revolutionary social clubs, 

the KRB Hall was a cover for gunrunning to Ireland. 

The 1916 Uprising was in the marrow of their bones. 

I remember she said the Americans called her a cow

on the street, and refused to give her a seat on the tram— 

though she was nine-months pregnant with her firstborn 

when her water broke. She cried for shame after all these years, 

she still cried, and I was a secret witness to her grief. 

That the oppressor wasn’t just her generation. 

When the nuns came to school, they asked us Catholics 

to raise their hands. We were new fodder in their gunsights.

And the ostracism began anew. We weren’t welcome 

at the Improvement Club pool, we might dirty the water.

Nor was I wanted in the Bluebirds, by then lesson learned,

I knew better than to join the Rainbow Girls.

We weren’t the right kind of daughters, 

we weren't the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

We were part of another kind of revolution in progress 

who couldn’t let go of the past, who couldn’t forgive or forget. 

I was a child of two worlds—an outsider to the Anglo world

a hostile witness to that grief my grandmother carried.

I didn't know we were all championing some form of segregation.

The Us/Them model kept us all apart. Kept us warring.

Meanwhile, on the news we learned that in Selma, Alabama,

they were marching, marching. Neighbors boarded buses.

Some didn't come back. That was when the riots began.

A man spoke, I have a dream. And the world came undone. 

I didn't realize it was all the same struggle.

2/9/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class First final draft.