Golden Shovel of lines from Takako Arai’s poem “Bobbins” trans Jeffrey Angles
What is my name? Fog rolls in from the river. I’ve
Worked here all my life, I’ve grown
Into an old woman weaving, with warp & weft as
The mill ran & I worked all overtime till I became thin
As the wind between drops of rain, light as
The fog off the water in early winter, a
Bird feather, or a rat snake
Weaving its way through the sewage. The
One who died at her machine. Thin
Thread the wheel took, sheets
Of cotton, dyed in the dye shop, dyes of
Indigo, rouge, ruby, citrine, dye a
Cloth weaved of fog off the river, the calendar
Page with the men going to war, torn
Open, make quota & off
They went disappearing
To ditches in countries I could not name. Before
We were women or men, we were your
Children in the meadow, brown eyes
I could not look away from—this
Boy whose hands were stained indigo. Is
There not a cloth so light such
It was the fog weaved? He touched me that way. A
Thread spooled from desire. Strange
Fabric that felt like dew on the wheel, spinning
The light of dusk in late autumn. Factory
Girls, we breast fed a milky thread. Workers
Along the rot river the men hauled cotton, headed nowhere
We can name except Lethe, unnamed to
The foremen we labored, cotton like thorns—be
Bled, be bobbin, be breath, be seen
& cleaned & carded like cloth. Already,
To be cut & sewn. No one gave us roses, nor bread. I
Wear now this dress dark as mourning for I am
All of the dead. I am cotton & gin, I am a
River of fog, I am a thin unraveling thread.
Sean Thomas Dougherty’s most recent books are Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions, and The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Poetry Prize, selected by Jessica Jacobs and Nickole Brown. He works as a long-term caregiver and Medtech in Erie PA.