Where Envelopes Come From (1977)
                 
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's 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.

Previously published in Mi Poesias, Spring 2007