University Of Massachusetts Research Articles

Water safe Worcester: student-led drowning prevention in an adolescent underserved population.

Adolescents aged 15 to 19 years have the second highest fatal drowning rate of any age group, second only to toddlers aged 12 to 36 months. This risk is amplified in black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), and those of low socioeconomic status. Worcester, MA is a diverse city with over 40% of residents identifying as BIPOC and 20% living below the poverty line. The city has multiple natural bodies of water available for recreation, putting Worcester residents, particularly adolescents, at high risk of drowning. It is known that swimming lessons provided to adolescents significantly improve their swimming skills, however many programs are tailored to young children and are not appropriate for adolescents. Students from the University of Massachusetts T.H. Chan Medical School (UMass Chan), in collaboration with community partners, developed a water safety and swim education program tailored to Worcester adolescents as a means for an age-appropriate swim experience and education, community engagement, and injury prevention. Water Safe Worcester (WSW) was established as a city-wide injury prevention program that included swim lessons offered by medical students at the Central Community Branch YMCA in Worcester, MA. Instructors included UMass Chan medical students, graduate students, and staff. Adolescent YMCA members were invited to participate in lessons free of charge. Lessons were 90 min and emphasized a 3-fold approach: (1) expand knowledge of water safety and what to do in an emergency, (2) increase swimming skills, and (3) reduce fear of water. The overall attendance for the 2023 spring and summer sessions offered was 73 students, including multiple swimmers who attended more than one session. A total of 12 volunteers participated, which included 9 first-year medical students, one PhD student, one research assistant, and one surgery resident from UMass Chan. WSW demonstrated promising outcomes during its swim education classes, suggesting that WSW is a successful model to promote water safety, reduce the risk of drowning, and expand access to life-saving skills to Worcester's at-risk adolescents. This program serves as a critical step toward health equity while also providing an avenue for public health and injury prevention exposure for medical students.

The EGSO: Against Scholarly Paternalism

The essay traces the origins of the Economics Graduate Student Organization (EGSO), founded in 1973 in the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. One enduring part of Jack Amariglio’s legacy lies in his contributions to the cofounding of this unique organization, which has waged a successful struggle against scholarly paternalism for half a century through, among other means, its control over the distribution of teaching jobs.

Jack Amariglio: In, of, and against Capitalist Reaction in the United States

Against a backdrop of the post-1945 capitalist reaction against the New Deal, this contribution by Richard Wolff to a Festschrift for Jack Amariglio traces Jack’s development as a student and activist, first at the City College New York (CCNY) and then as part of the graduate program in economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This period was followed by Jack’s decisive engagement with the group that would found the journal Rethinking Marxism during the 1980s and '90s, with Jack serving as its first editor. The essays follow through to Jack’s own development of a novel synthesis of postmodernism and Marxism, provoking and providing new theoretical standpoints from which to work, both from within and without the field of economics.

Jack Held All the Pieces Together

The coeditors of this Festschrift sent three questions to a number of Jack Amariglio’s interlocutors to explore the circumstances in which their paths have crossed with Jack’s and how that encounter has influenced them. In this exchange, Bruce Norton recalls Jack Amariglio’s solidarity work at the graduate school (Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and with Rethinking Marxism. He offers a case for reading Jack Amariglio’s writings on Marxism as an immanent critique, a postmodern Marxian encounter with modernist Marxian economics.

Auro Lecci’s Algorithmic Art: Toward the Computer as a Thinking Machine

Abstract This paper analyzes Italian artist Auro Lecci’s contribution to pioneering media art, beginning with his paintings and ending with his computer artworks (1969–1972). As the author suggests, Lecci’s paintings were already characterized by an algorithmic method that the artist went on to develop in his computer-generated works. The paper first discusses the plotter drawings Lecci created at the Computing Center of the University of Pisa (CNUCE), and then focuses on his last computer art project, made at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, to suggest connections between Lecci’s work and artificial intelligence.

Autoimmunities after COVID: An Interview with Cindy Patton

Cindy Patton is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. An early AIDS activist in Boston, she holds a PhD in Communications from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. After inaugurating her academic career at Temple University (Rhetoric and Community) and Emory University (Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts), she accepted a Canada Research Chair in Community, Culture and Health at Simon Fraser (2003-15). In that capacity, she worked with more than two dozen groups to develop small community-driven projects related to HIV/AIDS, housing, social welfare, mental health, while achieving, culminating in the creation of the Community Health Online Digital Research Resource, a catalogued, open-access, full-text collection of the materials from those groups (www.chodarr.org). Her academic publications span the social study of medicine, especially AIDS; social movement theory; gender studies; and media studies. She is the coeditor of Queer Diasporas (2000) and a special issue of Cultural Studies on Pierre Bourdieu (2003). She is the author of such works as Globalizing AIDS (2002), Cinematic Identity: Anatomy of a Problem Film (1997), Fatal Advice: How Safe-Sex Education Went Wrong (1996), Inventing AIDS (1990), and LA Plays Itself/Boys in the Sand: A Queer Film Classic (2014). Taken collectively, Patton’s scholarship and activism has laid the foundation for insights in the health humanities, particularly AIDS studies, that consider the inextricable connections between epidemiology and ideology. Patton’s theorizations of stigma and discrimination patterns, her deconstruction of “truth” discourses subtending science, her critical re-evaluations of axioms associated with risk, safe sex, community, and knowledge production have been crucial interventions in the understanding of health and illness as cultural and discursive scripts. Among Patton’s most enduring contributions has been her theorization of how “African AIDS” was invented and circulated—that is, the notion of geographically bifurcated HIV pandemics split by the essential linkage between Africa and blackness generally with pathogenesis. Equally influential has been her elaboration of the insurgent queer research practices that fused with antiracist struggle to combat this split. In the interview below, Travis Alexander and Nishant Shahani engage Patton in a discussion on a range of topics—from (dis)continuities between the HIV/AIDS and COVID pandemics to the role of queer activism in forging epidemiological counter-publics and the geopolitics of medical bureaucracy.

Students’ Experiences with Interprofessional Service-Learning Global Health Education Pilot Program in Ghana

Interprofessional service-learning programs can help to break down the education and training silos between public health and health care in the United States. This paper describes the development and implementation of one such program between the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, School of Public Health and Health Sciences, Bay Path University Physician Assistant Program, and the Wa-West Health District in Ghana. The program brought together Master of Public Health students and Physician Assistant students to complete an applied practicum and training experience in a low-resource community that faces significant health care and public health delivery challenges. In 2017 and 2018, nine students participated in the two-year pilot program, UMass Amherst Interprofessional Integrated Service Learning and Community-Based Participatory Collaboration. Students completed projects designed by Ghanaian health officials over two summers in direct collaboration with the communities. Findings from the evaluation of the pilot program revealed that though the students faced some challenges with the program, such as language barriers, transportation issues due to poor roads, and difficulty scheduling meetings while completing their projects in Ghana, the majority described their experience as positive and were satisfied. Some expressed the idea that their experiences were something that they could incorporate into their current and future practices. In addition, they reported that interprofessional communications and collaborations were effective. Recommendations are offered to address the program’s challenges for its continuation and formalization.

Prospective randomized pilot trial comparing prophylactic and therapeutic cerebrospinal fluid drainage during complex endovascular thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repair

BackgroundEndovascular techniques have transformed the management of thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms (TAAAs). However, spinal cord ischemia (SCI) remains a prevalent and devastating complication. Prophylactic drainage of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is among the proposed strategies for prevention of SCI. Although prophylactic CSF drainage is widely used and conceptually attractive, prophylactic CSF drains have not been demonstrated to definitively prevent the occurrence nor mitigate the severity of SCI in endovascular TAAA repair. Whether or not outcomes of prophylactic drains are superior to therapeutic drains remains unknown. This pilot study was performed to determine the feasibility of a randomized clinical trial designed to investigate the role of prophylactic vs therapeutic CSF drains in the prevention of SCI in patients undergoing endovascular TAAA repair using branched and fenestrated endovascular aortic repair (FBEVAR). MethodsThis was a prospective multicenter randomized pilot clinical trial conducted at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and The University of Massachusetts. Twenty patients were enrolled and randomized to either the prophylactic drainage or therapeutic drainage groups, prior to undergoing FBEVAR for extensive TAAAs and arch aortic aneurysms. This was a pilot feasibility study that was not powered to detect statistical differences in clinical outcomes. The primary outcome was feasibility of randomization and compliance with a shared lumbar drain protocol. Secondary outcomes included rate of drain complications and SCI. ResultsTwenty patients were enrolled and successfully randomized, without any crossovers, to either the control cohort (n = 10), without prophylactic drains, or the experimental cohort (n = 10), with prophylactic drains. There were no differences in age, comorbidities, or history of prior aortic surgery across the cohorts. All patients were treated with FBEVAR. Aneurysm classifications were as follows: Extent I (10%), Extent II (50%), Extent III (35%), and Extent IV (5%). The average length of aortic coverage was 207 ± 21.6 mm. The length of aortic coverage did not vary across cohorts, nor did procedural times or blood loss volume. Compliance with the SCI prevention protocol was 100% across both groups. Within the prophylactic drain cohort, one patient experienced an adverse event related to lumbar drain placement, manifested as an epidural hematoma requiring laminectomy, without neurologic deficit (n = 1/10; 10%). There was one SCI event (n = 1/20; 5%), which occurred in the prophylactic drain cohort on postoperative day 9 following an episode of hypotension related to a gastrointestinal bleed. ConclusionsThe role of prophylactic CSF drains for the prevention of SCI following endovascular TAAA repair is a topic of ongoing research, with many current practices based on expert opinion and experience, rather than rigorous scientific data. This study demonstrates the feasibility of a multicenter randomized clinical trial to evaluate the role of prophylactic vs therapeutic CSF drains in the prevention of SCI in patients undergoing endovascular TAAA repair.

Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories: Innovating aging research and Alzheimer's care.

This perspective outlines the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) at Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Massachusetts, highlighting their roles in developing AI-based technologies for older adult care, particularly targeting Alzheimer's disease (AD). These National Institute on Aging (NIA) centers foster collaboration among clinicians, gerontologists, ethicists, business professionals, and engineers to create AI solutions. Key activities include identifying technology needs, stakeholder engagement, training, mentoring, data integration, and navigating ethical challenges. The objective is to apply these innovations effectively in real-world scenarios, including in rural settings. In addition, the AITC focuses on developing best practices for AI application in the care of older adults, facilitating pilot studies, and addressing ethical concerns related to technology development for older adults with cognitive impairment, with the ultimate aim of improving the lives of older adults and their caregivers. HIGHLIGHTS: Addressing the complex needs of older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD) requires a comprehensive approach, integrating medical and social support. Current gaps in training, techniques, tools, and expertise hinder uniform access across communities and health care settings. Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies hold promise in transforming care for this demographic. Yet, transitioning these innovations from concept to marketable products presents significant challenges, often stalling promising advancements in the developmental phase. The Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) program, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), presents a viable model. These Collaboratories foster the development and implementation of AI methods and technologies through projects aimed at improving care for older Americans, particularly those with AD, and promote the sharing of best practices in AI and technology integration. Why Does This Matter? The National Institute on Aging (NIA) Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) program's mission is to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies for the betterment of older adults, especially those with dementia. By bridging scientific and technological expertise, fostering clinical and industry partnerships, and enhancing the sharing of best practices, this program can significantly improve the health and quality of life for older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Programming Mechanical Properties through Encoded Network Topologies.

Polymer networks remain an essential class of soft materials. Despite their use in everyday materials, connecting the molecular structure of the network to its macroscopic properties remains an active area of research. Much current research is enabled by advances in modern polymer chemistry providing an unprecedented level of control over macromolecular structure. At the same time, renewed interest in self-healing, dynamic, and/or adaptable materials continues to drive substantial interest in polymer network design. As part of a special issue focused on research performed in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, this review highlights connections between macromolecular structure of networks and observed mechanical properties as investigated by the Tew research group.

ECR Spotlight – Cory Elowe

ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Cory Elowe is an author on ‘ Sarcolipin relates to fattening, but not sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase uncoupling, in captive migratory gray catbirds’, published in JEB. Cory conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Alexander Gerson's lab at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. He is now a postdoc in the lab of Maria Stager at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, investigating the integrative physiology of environmental challenges.

Steel Structures Research Update: Adhesive Steel-to-Steel Connections

Ongoing research on adhesive steel-to-steel connections is highlighted. This study, currently underway at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, is led by Dr. Kara Peterman, Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Peterman’s research interests include behavior of cold-formed and hot-rolled steel structures under service loads and extreme loads due to natural hazards. Among Dr. Peterman’s accolades for her teaching and research are the University of Massachusetts–Amherst College of Engineering Outstanding Teacher Award, the McGuire Award for Junior Researchers from the Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC), the AISC Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award, and the AISC Milek Fellowship. The four-year Milek Fellowship is supporting this research on the holistic design and behavior of adhesive steel-to-steel connections. The research team is partway through year two of the four-year study. Selected highlights from the work to date are presented, along with a preview of future research tasks.

Entrevista a Walter Mignolo e Catherine E. Walsh

Catherine E. Walsh (1964) had her initial experiences as an activist at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), influencing her academic interests in pedagogy, decoloniality, and feminism. After completing her Ph.D. in Education in 1984, she worked at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and Boston until the mid-1990s when she permanently relocated to Ecuador. Among her many activist contributions, she stands out for her work alongside Paulo Freire and the critical pedagogy network in the 1990s, bilingual education and consulting projects for indigenous communities in Ecuador, and the establishment of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino, jointly with Afro-Ecuadorian community leader and intellectual Juan García Salazar in 2002, with whom she co-authored To Think Sowing/To Sow Thinking with Grandfather Zenon (2017). Notable among her various works are the edited volumes Decolonial Pedagogies (2013), On Decoloniality (in collaboration with Walter Mignolo, 2018), and her latest work, Rising Up, Living Up. Re-Existances, Sowings, and Decolonial Cracks (2023, Duke University Press). She recently retired as a professor and director of the Ph.D. program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito, Ecuador). Walter Mignolo (1941) specialized in Semiotics and Literary Theory and has made extensive contributions to the fields of modernity and coloniality. His work prominently explores the concepts of decoloniality, global colonialism, geopolitics of knowledge, border thinking, and pluriversality. He is a central figure in the Latin American decolonial thought school, with a profound impact on global academic discourse. The author of several books translated into other languages, notable among them, in addition to On Decoloniality, co-authored with Walsh, are The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (1996), winner of the Katherine Singer Kovaks Award, The Idea of Latin America (2006), winner of the Frantz Fanon Award, and his most recent work, The Politics of Decolonial Investigations (2021). He has been working at Duke University since 1993, where he holds the distinguished title of «William H. Wannamaker» as a professor of Literature and Romance Studies. The works developed by Walsh and Mignolo are an extension of the concept of coloniality initiated by the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, whom they consider disciples.

AT THE NEXUS OF PUBLIC POLICY AND AGING: DOCTORAL STUDIES IN GERONTOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON

Abstract One in five PhDs in Gerontology are graduates of the Gerontology doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston. The mission of UMass Boston’s program is to provide advanced training and research in gerontology within an interdisciplinary framework drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from the social and behavioral sciences. The program is designed to prepare students for leadership roles as educators, researchers, planners, and policy makers. The program has a deep emphasis on policy development, analysis, and impact, an attribute that goes back to the roots of the Gerontology enterprise at UMass Boston in the late-1970s. This presentation provides an overview of the program’s history and curriculum, along with coursework, research and service-learning experiences, and career paths in policy research and implementation. The program also is committed to increasing diversity in the field of gerontology, with the aim of strengthening policy impact and reducing disparities in the aging experience.

Fair Machine Learning Post Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision on June 29, effectively ended the use of race in college admissions [1]. Indeed, national polls found that a plurality of Americans - 42%, according to a poll conducted by the University of Massachusetts [2] - agree that the policy should be discontinued, while 33% support its continued use in admissions decisions. As scholars of fair machine learning, we ponder how the Supreme Court decision shifts points of focus in the field. The most popular fair machine learning methods aim to achieve some form of "impact parity" by diminishing or removing the correlation between decisions and protected attributes, such as race or gender, similarly to the 80% rule of thumb of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. Impact parity can be achieved by reversing historical discrimination, which corresponds to affirmative actions, or by diminishing or removing the influence of the attributes correlated with the protected attributes, which is impractical as it severely undermines model accuracy. Besides, impact disparity is not necessarily a bad thing, e.g., African-American patients suffer from a higher rate of chronic illnesses than White patients and, hence, it may be justified to admit them to care programs at a proportionally higher rate [3]. The U.S. burden-shifting framework under Title VII offers solutions alternative to impact parity. To determine employment discrimination, U.S. courts rely on the McDonnell-Douglas burden-shifting framework where the explanations, justifications, and comparisons of employment practices play a central role. Can similar methods be applied in machine learning?

Building back better: Granular energy technologies in green recovery funding programs

Building back better: Granular energy technologies in green recovery funding programs

Internal Kinematics and Structure of the Bulge Globular Cluster NGC 6569 ∗ ∗ Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Cerro Paranal (Chile), in the context of the ESO-VLT Multi-Instrument Kinematic Survey (MIKiS survey) under Large Programmes 106.21N5 (PI: Ferraro), 195.D-0750 (PI: Ferraro), 193.D-0232 (PI: Ferraro). This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All

In the context of a project aimed at characterizing the properties of star clusters in the Galactic bulge, here we present the determination of the internal kinematics and structure of the massive globular cluster NGC 6569. The kinematics has been studied by means of an unprecedented spectroscopic data set acquired in the context of the ESO-VLT Multi-Instrument Kinematic Survey of Galactic globular clusters, combining the observations from four different spectrographs. We measured the line-of-sight velocity of a sample of almost 1300 stars distributed between ∼0.″8 and 770″ from the cluster center. From a subsample of high-quality measures, we determined the velocity dispersion profile of the system over its entire radial extension (from ∼5″ to ∼200″ from the center), finding the characteristic behavior usually observed in globular clusters, with a constant inner plateau and a declining trend at larger radii. The projected density profile of the cluster has been obtained from resolved star counts, by combining high-resolution photometric data in the center, and the Gaia EDR3 catalog radially extended out to for a proper sampling of the Galactic field background. The two profiles are properly reproduced by the same King model, from which we estimated updated values of the central velocity dispersion, main structural parameters (such as the King concentration, the core, half mass, and tidal radii), total mass, and relaxation times. Our analysis also reveals a hint of ordered rotation in an intermediate region of the cluster (40″ < r < 90″, corresponding to 2r c < r < 4.5r c ), but additional data are required to properly assess this possibility.

Notes on Contributors

Previous article FreeNotes on ContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreCharles Cathcart is an honorary associate in English with the Open University. He has published—often as an independent scholar—since 1999. He is intrigued by the processes through which multiple writing contributions may cohere within a single early modern text. His recent subjects have included the publication history of John Marston’s writings in the years after he ceased drafting plays, the stationer Leonard Becket and his publications, and the canon of Thomas Heywood.Jeffrey S. Doty is an associate professor of English at the University of North Texas and the author of Shakespeare, Popularity and the Public Sphere (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His essays on Shakespeare and ethics can be found in Shakespeare Quarterly and Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and his work on Shakespeare, social class, and popular politics in Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners: Digesting the New Social History (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Literature Compass. His essays coauthored with Musa Gurnis on the early modern London “theater scene” and its interactive public have appeared in the journal Shakespeare and in Publicity and the Early Modern Stage: People Made Public (Palgrave, 2021). He is currently preparing a critical edition of Coriolanus for Cambridge University Press.Margo Kolenda-Mason is a visiting assistant professor of English-Literary Studies at Hendrix College. Her first book project, Fruitless Labor in Early Modern English Literature, explores rhetorics and representations of subverted, thwarted, and frustrated labor in poetry and drama. She is also contributing a chapter on “Work, Play, and Solitude” in A Cultural History of Solitude in the Early Modern Age, forthcoming from Bloomsbury’s Cultural History series.Scott Maisano is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous venues, including The Tempest: A Critical Guide (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare), Early Modern Theatricality (Oxford University Press), Configurations, Extrapolation, Shakespeare Studies, and Shakespeare Quarterly. His current book project—“Labouring with Shakespeare—is both a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s lost comedy, Love’s Labour’s Won, and a critical engagement with academe, race, and speculation in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 51, Number 1Spring 2023 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/726061 © 2023 Northwestern University. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Invited Response to Andrews.

University of Massachusetts, Lowell Lowell, MA The authors declare no conflicts of interest. (Manuscript accepted 18 November 2022) Supplemental digital content is available in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal’s website www.health-physics.com.

The Janitor Who Swept Where There Was no Dust; and: The Fireflies of Belmont Avenue

The Janitor Who Swept Where There Was no Dust; and: The Fireflies of Belmont Avenue Martín Espada (bio) Keywords Martín Espada, janitor, trash, refugee, memorial poem, Brooklyn, butcher shop, fireflies, Yiddish Everybody loved the new janitor, a round man who grinned roundly all day,who hauled away the detritus of daycare in garbage bags: crushed juice boxes,the cellophane of rice cracker snacks, napkins that wiped bawling mouths,toilet paper that sopped up the puddles from bladders that burst like waterballoons. He swept even where there was no dust, mopped even where therewas no dirt, scrubbed the faucets silver and the bowl white even wheneverybody said Gracias, Orlando and told him he could go home for the night. We knew he was a refugee from Pinochet’s Chile. We knew he was a Mormonlike my mother-in-law. I invited Orlando to dinner in Spanish. After dessert,we sipped tea and talked in a corner about the coup. I was in the army, he said.I was in the countryside. I saw nothing. I saw no one arrested. I saw no onetortured. I saw no one die. Nothing? I said. Nothing, he said. He wanted to talkabout the Church of Latter-Day Saints, how they baptized even the dead. I wondered if the Church of Latter-Day Saints baptized the three thousanddead after the coup, holy water rinsing the quicklime and mud fromthe bones, raising them heavenward to sit at the banquet table withthe general and the soldiers who saw nothing. He swept where therewas no dust. He mopped where there was no dirt. We kept his secret. [End Page 64] THE FIREFLIES OF BELMONT AVENUE For Jules Chametzky (1928–2021)I see you as a boy, ten years old, at your father’s butcher shop on Belmont Avenuein Brooklyn, the words Kosher Meat spelled out in Hebrew across the window,the chickens dangling in the window, the words unbroken, the glass unbroken,the butcher unbroken. I see you watch your father as we watch our fathers,scanning the Yiddish newspaper at the counter, Lucky Strike glowing in his mouth,as you wait for his words to rise and fall like fireflies or embers, learning howwords fly or burn, when to cup your hands to catch a word, when to jump away.The customers would lean across the counter to buy chickens from your mother. I see you again at eighty. I watch you as we watch our fathers, as I would watch my fatherand his cigarette, the organizer who could rouse the crowd, waiting for his words to flyor burn. I am a boy from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and you are the teacher,slicing up Hemingway like a chicken boned across the page. Yet, for me, a poet withoutthe first strand of gray in his beard, your words are always fireflies. I would cup themin my hands, and see them glow, as I see them now, even as I lift my hands to let them go. [End Page 65] Martín Espada martín espada’s latest book of poems is called Floaters, winner of the National Book Award and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Other collections of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, The Trouble Ball, and Alabanza. He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump. He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, a Letras Boricuas fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Copyright © 2023 The Massachusetts Review, Inc