Beatrice

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life

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Beatrice and I had plans this evening,

After she punched out from a long day of weaving.

Bibi was a seamstress, the sole British rose

Among a hedgery of immigrant women from Italy,

The ravishing daisy in a bouquet of Jewish ladies,

Aged eighteen to twenty-three.

She was twenty two, but she was very astute.

Beatrice was quite pleasant, she dismantles any classification of peasant.

For she and I combined, may not have luxuries and riches,

But we had each other, more intricately woven than any assortment of stitches.

She was fascinated by French philosophy,

And Marx's stance on industrial poverty.

She looked all around her and noted his prefaces,

The array of exploitation and nefarious exercises taking place

around the premises.

While she was sewing a chemise, a co-worker snuck a ciggy.

She was stressed from the long hours and the six day-work week.

She introduced herself as Phoebe, she was only seventeen.

But she was talented with her grubbies.

Thus, as an adolescent she was employed for flawless finesse to press garments,

She impressed in margins, as did Bibi with her arms as soft as margarine.

Anxiety would garnish Phoebe's wages, but the pennies gave some swages.

To keep her keen as mustard when the conditions tested her mettle.

She swore that she would never settle.

She heard the floor boss approaching and tossed the butt in a waste basket,

Then she crept away from the contraband and trash can.

The scraps and sheered fabric piled up over months, swept away in the stunt.

A small fire was ignited and it tickled the shunt.

The tables were made of a laminated wood,

Which accelerated the blaze. Detect it? No one could.

The rubbish fire was unattended and infectiously manifested.

A passerby, outside noticed fumes of coal,

Emanating from the eighth-story window.

He picked up the telephone and notified the fire department,

Attention, lads. A fire has started.

The sirens and alarms yelled through the metropolis' noisy ambiance,

Yet Beatrice was humming upstairs, unaware.

These maiges were locked in cages, preventing the business from any kind of pilfery.

Unknowing you can see the black clouds billow from Flatbush and Tillary.

Yet they were on level up, but had no idea what was going down.

The feminine populous that discovered the inferno, bolted for the elevator, rushing from the Gotham sterno.

The air boiled and filled with poisonous vapors,

Yet the ladies on the floors above, still hadn't the vaguest caprice.

Bibi and her colleagues, proceeded with their meticulous tapers.

Knitting together a wintry fleece.

I was walking down the Bowery, when I saw the haze of ebony,

I was clutching a carnation, ready to give it to Bethany.

That was her nickname, given to her by her family,

I ran and sprinted until I reached the facility.

I saw the bulbous flames clawing through the shattered window panes.

High pitched screams echoing excruciating pain,

The agonizing heat paralyzed any method of escape.

I rushed to find a ladder to climb, I assumed she was marooned on a desert isle subsiding in tides of flames.

All these young sweethearts and wives, dying

From smoke inhalation and asphyxiation.

The brigade was laboring to stretch the line and douse the bloodthirsty dragon.

Me...I could not delay, I had to be vigilant.

I jogged the perimeter and could not locate an entrance.

The smell of torrid incadescence was masked by shrieks of horror

And whimpers of torment.

One by one they leaped to their deaths, crashing on the pavement in a grisly puddle of claret.

The blood-splattered footpaths were sluggishly trickling amid a bath of blond and brown strands,

Hands cupped and eyes absent with life.

None of the victims fit Bibi's description. Finally I heard her.

The English accent was signature, it was Bethany!

My cervical bones ached at the grade of the angle, I abruptly gazed up.

She was dangling from a busted out ninth-floor aperture. It seemed that the particles had captured her.

I scanned around and searched for a way to scale the brick vinere and climb to my dear.

I instructed her to hang on and try to perch near the open gape.

She stated the room was uninhabitable, the smoke and temperature was hard to take.

The goods were combusting at an extraordinary rate.

The sewing circle was fully involved and anyone who sought safety was deceased and dissolved

By the bubbling conflagration. I was met by a nauseating sensation.

A hint of scorching flesh that was pungent, it was an unforgettable stench.

Nevertheless, I was quick to forget, for I had to salvage my wench.

Build a contraption with a socket and wrench.

For she was hanging ninety-feet above me.

Jerking her sweat glistened forearms, prying her paws in to the ventilation's base.

Gravity adored her almost as much as I, yanking at her wine colored skirt.

"Bibi! Use the sill as a bench."

"I cannot, it can barely endure my weight."

"Just wait! Please babe. I bought you this floral arrangement to put in a vase."

It ended up coming to rest beside her grave.

The fire spread too rapidly and Bibi vaulted to her death

Just as the one hundred and forty others on that fateful day.

Her feeble ankles snapped in half when she hit the granite,

Her bones were fractured, her body was mangled.

Her bun was tangled in a disorderly bunch.

Tomorrow was Sunday, I planned to take her to church and treat her to lunch.

Before she went to work, she was dressed to the nines,

We were going to see the play, once I surprised her at five.

Les Miserables up on Broadway, with a bottle of chardonnay.

She was wearing a lovely white blouse, her hair dangled down the spine of her shirt.

She was prim and proper, but she was witty and she knew how to flirt,

She brushed on powder and donned mascara, she had the glamour of a cascara.

Bibi was gutsy and courageous and she could easily be, my top mate.

When I saw her at the market, I too felt the impact of smacking in to a metallic grate.

I fell head over heels, as did she.

Bibi and me, we were more alike than we could ever anticipate.

Now it is she, that decays on the city boulevard

Rigor mortis setting in, her limbs scarred and hard.

Her cheeks are charred, singed superficially upon the upper layers of skin.

I instantly simper and strain my fingers in to my britches,

To squeeze a saturated napkin.

I sob, a downpour of tears to cleanse the square of gore.

She was the one I wished to marry, but she perished in the factory.

I lived for decades after but always found myself reminiscing of the laughter.

The desserts she'd prepare and the spectacular shade of her auburn hair,

The piercing azure in her eyes and her milky satin skin.

Beatrice would have been a trophy wife, she was assuredly my best friend.

After that incident, I enlisted as a fireman,

I'd do anything to prevent and ensure that it would never happen again.

If only I could have caught lovely Bea, as she fell to the depth of the cobblestone well,

We may have whistled a hymn serenaded by the chimes of cathedral bells.

But all I can do now is waste away and binge.

The thoughts of her suffocating and crying, I sporadically cringe

Until the day finally came, when I passed away.

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Copyright 2014, Keith Fuchs. All rights reserved. No portion of this poem may be reproduced, transmitted or distributed without expressed and written consent of author.