That
curdled dead
horse
smell coming
from
machine jams
of paper and amber glue—
our
Luddite knights,
horse & armor—
diminish the roar
insignificantly.
When
all the machines are going
and
they always are
it is
all-the-machines-of-the-world
loud.
A percussive shroud.
Or a
hailstorm tumult
with
birds running for cover
but we
stay where we are
assigned. One grows accustomed.
The
factory hangar holds us:
an
enormous mouth
clamped
shut, the chew
or
swallow imminent.
It
makes sense
over
liquid lunch.
Some
guys never sober up
till a strike is called—
then
the harsher supervision
of
their wives.
Our
eyes raccoon
from
sluggish shifts, short
stone-solid sleeps.
I dream
about the factory
superintendent, he
stands
behind me as I bend
and
pour warm glue
into
trays pooled inside
my
machine—a colossal metal Fury
of a
thing. He is a handsome
clean
man, my nails are dark,
moonless, and my hands richly
paper-cut from tip to roughed-up
heel.
I feel the machine in
me, how
he and I could
climb
into the vast dark side
of the
hangar warehouse, into
the
mechano-set "stacks"
where
one can cop
a smoke
or, through denim
overalls, a feel. But I am here
to
beguile the proletariat.
I, the
boat-rocking union
pinko
chick. Popular
as a
month of consecutive
Mondays.
Several
two-men
sized
women workers
rule
the floor: huge, good
for
"bumping" in what passes
for
promotion. Their hard
eyes
narrow, sink into their
sizeable faces if their stations
are
threatened
and
their mandibles
roil
when sickness
or
death open up
a
coveted post.
Pillars
of tree
remnants—
bleached, manilla,
pastel—stand around us
like
another species
tidy
and doomed.
The
tallest man ever was
an
American.
Robert Pershing Wadlow
of
Illinois, 7 foot 8
at
the age of five and
later 8 foot 8 at twenty-two
died alone in his sky.
According to some
Hebrew chroniclers, Goliath
of
Gath stood at 9 ˝ feet
but
Flavius Josephus' translations
of
the Septuagint offer the more
credible 6 feet 10.
.
Much later French anthropometrist
Paul Topinard could not pull
off
his tallest man of Finland
claim, nor could a drum major
in the Russian Imperial Regiment—
femurs and tibias in Leiden Museum
display the lucent truth.
Last night I measured you
beneath a tall ambergris
moon, fragrant and ash-
colored, in the calipers
of
my gaze.
You
were no giant,
no
Ringling acromegalith
tight-walking out that door.
I
recalled the celebrated midget
Jozef ("Count") Boruwlaski
of
Poland, a mere 35 inches
at
his peak. How his memory,
past all expectation, lived on.
The roads from Havana
scrawl into unscripted
distance. Frond
paradise, and no ideas
on
what to buy, oh my.
Cars flirt
and
colorize, forever
once young.
Who
has not wanted
it:
to still a time, our truest.
But
we know this is a poor idea;
with the true comes
the all-too-true, though in Cuba—
what a soundtrack!
Cuba, I love your rhythms, your Che
dolls, your sanguine
Fidelity, your art
naive. I love you most
when I leave.
And
return to nothing
averse. I wrap for you
the
cocoa and the DVD's
and
the dollars and recall the breeze
as
the Malecon wall is wanked
by
the irresistible, the sea.
