POCKETBOOKS
Back around 1928 when everyone wore hats
and women carried pocketbooks,
genuine alligator bags with gold clasps
big enough to hold lipsticks, powder
puffs and rouge, a stash of nickels for the subway,
perhaps even Lucky Strikes in jeweled cases,
Back around 1928 my grandma Annie
got her first silver fox shawl
with real fox-heads and paws at each end.
Rich cousin Bessie Shlansky
had a full-length sheared mink coat
and the upstairs neighbor wore beaver
with a matching hat, Rose from Albemarle Road
owned Persian lamb plus a
leopard coat with a tam, what a zoo
when they paraded together on Ocean Parkway
for the High Holidays.
Though hers was not a coat,
Annie was proud at last to own fur
only a couple of decades after Ellis Island.
I don’t begrudge them their happiness
despite the flaunting of animal skins
back when Green referred to Greenhorns, the latest
immigrants, those lucky enough to get through
before the gates of America shut
And poverty was just around the corner
the clouds in the Old Country
already tinged black.