Anne Ryland
Shell Shop
After running up and down years
of stairs, I’m in uniform again,
the trim black outline of me
lumped into grey dungarees.
Dust and smoke, day or night shift,
it’s all the same without windows.
I try to colour myself –
an emerald turban, a ruby headscarf.
We all do. Look at us, scattered across
this old glove factory like so many parrots!
I don’t know why our lips are juicy
with Auxiliary Red, as if we’re longing
to kiss or be kissed.
Machines spit at us, hammers stutter.
We can’t even speak. Alone
with the innards of cylinders,
their silver bellies open,
their blood-oil staining our hands
so we have to scrub them till they’re raw.
I’ve still got ten fingers.
The way we touch our creations
you’d think we were sewing dresses of silk.
Under a shower of white-hot shavings
I cut the case into shape, twine the coils
and always, at the last stage, a bolt
tightens in my neck, sparks dance behind my eyes.
Then it’s just me and the bomb.
The roar of a silence in which people go missing.
Page(s) 7
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