PoetryMagazine.com Alice Elizabeth Rogoff

PoetryMagazine.com BACK Since 1996 Volume XXI Alice Elizabeth Rogoff

Alice Elizabeth Rogoff has three poetry books - Materials, Mural: winner of the 2004 Blue Light Book Award, and Barge Wood published by CC. Marimbo. Her poetry project on labor union women in San Francisco is supported by an individual literary grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. She has degrees from San Francisco State University and Grinnell College.

Burns

Burns
On her face
Even though she survived.
Her burns still mark her body.
The demonstrators are walking
Down Market Street
Going to the GAP store,
The Walmart R Us workers
Join in the march
Starting from Local 2 Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union.
The cable car tourist crowds
Are in front of us,
The sign on the GAP window,
Life is Shorts
On a hot day
In San Francisco.
Two women lie down
As the dead,
Women shoppers ask me questions.
Women from Bangladesh speak,
Say the names of those
Who died
In the garment factory fire
In Bangladesh.
Friends lost.
Burns 
Under the skin
That do not disappear.