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1936. Her Mother In the Daylight Hours


ISSUE:  Autumn 1988
The mother is rolling cigars in the factory.
She is best of all at it,
even beautiful, her white hands
amid the woody threads, the acrid
raw silk of the wrapping;
she is best of all,
can do it without thinking
or asking a question, could do it
while talking, but doesn’t
ever. And so she could never
be the other one, the teacher,
so would never be
the distant one, the foreman.

For she is in it for good,
on the floor, for life, watching
the dark pieces tucked
into their cover and the hands,
her hands, as they lengthen and pale
and her one thought,
this is my machine—
the shroud around the shadow—
this is, so loudly, what we’ve made, this.

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