Not a Joke
Isn’t it funny
(not a joke
no humor
no puns)
Isn’t it funny
how war creates a necessity
that strips away all the labels
previously preventing a person’s
life work?
Isn’t it funny
(not a joke
no humor
no puns)
Isn’t it funny
how the devastation of war
creates industries
and builds an economy out of
destruction?
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017
“My mother was writing her dissertation when I was little and got her Ph.D. in 1939. But it was the middle of the Depression; she was Jewish, a socialist, and a woman; and she couldn’t get a job teaching. But when the Second World War broke out, she got a job on an assembly line in a bomb factory, and Bud went to work as a carpenter in a shipyard.”
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/malvina-reynolds/
“My mother was writing her dissertation when I was little and got her Ph.D. in 1939. But it was the middle of the Depression; she was Jewish, a socialist, and a woman; and she couldn’t get a job teaching. But when the Second World War broke out, she got a job on an assembly line in a bomb factory, and Bud went to work as a carpenter in a shipyard.”
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/malvina-reynolds/
Sad, ironic truth. My mother taught as a widow, mid WWII, but had to stop when she re-married, the 'rule' for married women. I like the repetition.
ReplyDeleteML thanks for sharing your story behind the poem.
ReplyDeleteYes, true. Sad and ironic.
ReplyDeleteI'm saddened that we are beginning to see this play out right now, with our president playing at "strong-man" and claiming he'll save our economy.
ReplyDelete