Ellis Island 1899

First they took the vowels of our names
& the onions & rye we kept in our pockets.
We had to sound normal, smell normal,
& not look back across the ocean.

These requisites achieved, they sorted us
in rooms with worn wooden walls
where nurses peeled the lice from our heads
with long metal instruments unknown 

in the old land. Then we fumbled through
our purses for numbers & streets, names
they’d also changed. They gave my boy
a coloring book & crayons left behind,

& my girl a doll with American hair.
Their precision abrupt & peculiar, robotic,
they gave us toothbrushes & frowned 
when my brother lit a cigarette. Two hours

till the Baltimore train, a woman said,
then disappeared through a doorway 
where the coffee was hot & the Americans 
read newspapers. We were just a day 

to them, a noisy procedure of paperwork
& information, cross-checks & referrals.
None knew about Hancock County,
though I had maps & twenty-seven dollars,

a picture of the Pope & a picture of a house.
I’d practiced the words so long: My husband 
is a miner & he’s waiting. My husband’s name…
but I was crying & the world turned futile

& everywhere the sky was snow & rain.
He had a name, my husband, golden eyes
& a pocketwatch made in Bratislava
with my initials carved into it.