FACTORIES, SMELTERS, SPINDLES
Originally published in the Connecticut River Review in 2015.
This poem is for people
who worked in tainted places–
the men beneath the 1915 zinc smelter,
their mouths covered only with cloth.
They were already ghosts walking through
a poisonous vapor, under great metal udders.
This is for the Triangle Fire women
who leapt unwillingly to their deaths,
nine floors down.
This is for the New York City
caisson workers, those subterranean navigators,
working slightly faster than the pressure
that gnawed their bones.
This is for the women who made bullet primers
at the turn-of-the-century,
daily working the great paste
of wet fulminate of mercury.
This is for all the people
who worked too close to gyrating wheels
and constantly closing presses.
This is for industrial England
and for where I used to live,
for the people who worked to support me.
This is for the sad boys
sorting slate from coal
bent over and sweating, to be driven
down below ground as men.
This is for the cotton workers,
how the fine fibers
became an uncomfortable dust,
then a gagging cough.
This is for Brazil and China
learning the way of metal
and money. This is for those who are poisoned
at work and sense it, and for the ones
who won’t know quite soon enough.
Susan Waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York and for 13 years was a magazine editor and writer. Her publishing credits are extensive. She has won 10 prizes in poetry and has been nominated twice for the PushCart Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook Heat Lightning was published in 2017 by Orchard Street Press. Currently, she is Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Junior College.