Rita Wong

DENIM BLUES

there are denim mountains in my closet:
well-worn cutoffs, raggedy jeans,
adolescent skintight pants, baggy prairie overalls,
years of tacky stampede outfits

nothing comes between me &
the labour of the garment workers
their fifty cents a day sweat
hugs me tight every morning

my auntie’s fingers nimble
with the demands of piecework
how she churns dozens of jeans by dim lamplight
one more casualty for casual wear

cotton picked by hungry workers
beaten into fabric & submission in far-off factories
dissembled into department store offerings

black denim with amputated
fingers waving bloody threads from pockets
knotting in my chest as i look in the closet
find nothing to wear

nothing, that is, but
thin faded gauze ripping open,
spilling labour into consumer vision,
ragged with guilt, ignorance, fear
but still rippling, a necessary banner
in the wind for change

From monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998).

Found at her website.

EL BLUES DE DENIM

hay montañas de denim en mi placard

ropas usadas bien gastadas, jeans andrajosos,

pantalones ajustados adolescentes, monos jardineros holgados,

años de pegajosas estampidas hacia afuera

nada hay entre

las ropas de trabajo de los obreros & yo

sus cincuenta centavos el sudor de un día

me abraza fuerte cada mañana

los dedos derechos de mi tía

con las demandas de trabajo a destajo

cómo producía docenas de jeans bajo la luz tenue

una víctima más para la ropa casual

el algodón recolectado por trabajadores hambrientos

golpeados dentro de la estructura & sumisión en fábricas remotas

disimulados dentro de las ofertas de las secciones de negocios

el denim negro con los dedos amputados

moviendo hilos sangrientos desde los bolsillos

anudando en mi pecho mientras miro en mi placard

no encuentro nada para usar

nada, eso es, pero

el desgarro de una malla desteñida delgada

desbordando el trabajo dentro de la visión del consumidor

harapiento con culpa, ignorancia, miedo

pero aún así se tensa una pancarta

en el viento para el cambio

Traducido del inglés por Myriam Rozenberg.

Encontrado en el blog de la traductora.

Rita Wong (Canada, 1968). She is the author of three books of poetry: sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books, 2008), forage (Nightwood 2007), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998). forage won Canada Reads Poetry 2011. Wong received the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Award in 1997, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2008. Building from her doctoral dissertation which examined labour in Asian North American literature, her work investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization.

An Associate Professor in Critical + Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she has developed a humanities course focused on water, for which she received a fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is currently researching the poetics of water with the support of a SSHRC Research/Creation grant.

From her website.