Zoë Anglesey: Two Poems


 

Copyright © 2000 by Zoë Anglesey and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 

Two Poems 
 

Zoë Anglesey 
 

 
 

Modern-day Shoe Factory Workers Sewing Nike Uppers 

(photo by Dara O'Rourke) 

   

SHOE FACTORY WORKER  

Lynn, Massachusetts, 1895 

 

Alone at your stations, you keep sewing in tongues, another 

girl's job--hand-stitch the eyelets. How many pairs did it 

take to unlock the door, step into a dreamless twilight-- 

At a boarding house in candle dim, a bit of time to wash  

away grit, and worry: The foreman hired by owners on the  

hill, what will he take? How many stillbirths did you bury? 

Peaked, your own shoes worn through and not a dime to  

save, Taylor's wayall this kindled whispers and when hell  

could not be traded,  

your brave walked out into daylight. 



Anglesey 2 

Copyright © 1999 by Zoë Anglesey and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087  

Men hired to knock billyclubs against auburn tresses said  

you spread backtalk against the boss, riled a strike. Who  

knew during taper 

hours you read Adam Bede and The Copperhead. 

The photo hides maimed fingers, bones bowed by rickets.  

After influenza, orphan-daughters owned no Sunday-best.  

They fashioned ladies' hightops and paid their mothers'  

debts. 

  

RENASCENCE 

 

Every dawn, people rise up one by one 

and to see them from the earth above 

through clouds and crowns of trees 

the standing is a surging wave. Hurled out 

of darkness riding earth's carrousel, with slant 

grasses, marigold instinct enamors sunward. 

Before a day's finale, in unison, peoplereturn  

from work and after untold pressure, recoup  

one by one, recline, rest a while, lay with.  

 

Prodigious thinkers dormant in midnight's  

velvet, surrender to a pillow's mercy. Sleepers 

hope their muscles unknot limber as taffy. 

Scaling defeats, the prostrate rise erect,  

exalt the lift and fall of hands to harvest  

what a mind seeskindling for the flames.