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).
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.
