Still Lives
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Before me,
the heavy ocean.
Rotted planks
heave with the sadness of passing feet.
The waves are oiled black;
they smell of summers
thrown overboard,
ruined grasses mixing
with the swell of the sea.
Women at the port gather
like clusters of leaves.
Night has dressed them shabbily,
wind tears hair from their faces.
I’ll not forget ye, now
God bless
be smart
I’ll be waiting to hear news
of ye
Faces burrow
in must-darkened jackets,
words like fluid pass
through parted lips.
Arms clutch parcels and packages,
open and close
like crows’ wings.
I walk the raw and lonely planks
to the ship’s hard shoulder.
On the docks
the women hang trembling
then blow apart,
scatter down laneways.
As the ship groans
and draws away,
I see their foreheads
bleached with worry
under the paling scrap
of moon.
~~~~
Seated high on deck
I am a mountain smothered in rags,
not yet a mother
and not quite a woman.
I keep to myself,
sip tea and broth.
The ocean shimmers, watches me
with her gleaming eye.
Flickers of waves scurry
across her belly.
She parts white wings of foam;
they rush along the ship’s side,
are left behind
then gathered back to her.
She clenches her fists,
searing me from inside.
Grey fog fills
the column of my throat
as I cry out.
The captain scowls,
the women rush
to bring water.
The ocean mounts my belly,
salt waves flood
my white cotton shift.
I cling to the knife-thin edge
of moon, and bear down.
I am spreading open
over the fields,
gashed by the spade and harrow,
lashed by spasms of waves.
The ocean rocks me,
her sweat in my hair,
bridling my neck with her icy teeth.
I push again,
and the warm weight
slides out of me
with relief of cold sky.
They bring scissors
and cut this child from me.
She is dead, still as a sparrow
found in the grass
after a storm.
I wrap her tight as an egg
and watch her fall
into the ocean:
Marguerite,
small daughter
given over
to wet dark hands.
~~~~
The ship rocks clear
into a wooden harbour.
I am bleached and freckled,
hair loose and dry
as wisps of clover.
I step off the plank
into a city of moving carriages:
a thin girl, straight as a stick
tossed across the ocean.
With blood on my legs
I stand astride
a new world
of stone.
The silken threads
“Economic antagonisms exist in nearly every labor movement, yet something else happens that sets the movement in motion. In Lyon, it was the working conditions… Air was not circulated, as windows were vehemently prohibited from being opened… there were even tunnels leading from building to building so that the silk would never be exposed to the outside air during
manufacturing.”
– Erika Budde, “Silk in Lyons,”
The Northhampton Silk Project,
Smith College
There is a beating of wings
when you shift in the sheets –
moth’s breath rustles the curtains.
In the front room, the loom waits,
lewd giant, hungry for your fingers,
the lean of your shoulder
over the grain of the cloth.
The warp and weft
unbroken, your eyes locked
in secret patterns
of paisley, damask,
as a griffin floats across the screen.
Braiding and unbraiding
the silken threads
your eyes are glossed as wet stones,
bluer than dye.
Dawn spills, russet
as the blood of weavers.
Soon you will stir, rise,
one thin stem of wheat
among a field of others.
Across Croix-Rousse
all wake in narrow rooms, swaying:
cough the rattle-cough,
the lungs’ pulleys dipped in ash,
coated with the raw dust
of the cloth. You move
to the washbasin, soap skin
the colour of wax,
sip strong tea and begin
the tapping of the loom.
It spins and cords the muscles
tight across your back,
your arms as heavy
as wet branches.
Hours blend
with the strings of sunlight
that scale the window.
When the room is dark
you stumble into bed;
only our words of loving still
the sound of the loom
before the great silk curtain
of sleep lowers you
with vermilion, russet and gold
to that dim place,
the island in the sea
of exhaustion.
* * *
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