The origin of NBA championship shirts by Connor Deeks
The back, the front, the sleeves, the endless threads,
Come together from the wrinkled faces,
Bent over a sweatshop sewing machine,
One dollar a day, one small meal a day,
Living in a micro-room with others,
Those others her family of seven.
The needle that sews the thread back and forth,
Causes her to bleed on the white cotton,
No bother, the red dye will bleed it out,
It clots not before a rod claps her hands,
A friendly reminder of her friendly boss,
Taiwan is a wonderful place to work.
The seams are invisible to others,
with its clean cuts and heavy detailing,
As the sun shines bright onto the white lace,
illuminated at every angle,
the light calls to her, with arms wide open,
She is no longer afraid of the dark.
Gossiping over tea and rice noodles,
She wonders who will wear her great artwork,
The white shirt dyed red with a ball on front,
The word 'heat' pressed underneath the image,
Who will buy her twelve-hour-day agony?
Who would keep her and her people starving?
At the Triangle Factory she works,
a fire started in the corner near Won,
His work ignited first, followed by him,
The fire moved from old machine to machine,
From worker to worker until she saw.
One-hundred forty died in the hot flames.
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Posted: Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—
The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once
He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—
Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked
Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,
The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:
George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
Robert Pinsky, “Shirt” from The Want Bone. Copyright © 1990 by Robert Pinsky. Reprinted with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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