I try to tell my brother not to call himself a “go-fer”
just because he fetches cardboard 

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for women shouting, “Bring me a double order,” 

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who get paid by the piece.

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A thin vibration against her machine,

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Wendy filled 40D cups with tissue paper

​

and longing until opting for a little more herself.
She used to sew the fine pink bows

​

till the Singers were hauled out on dollies.
Packaging’s what’s left and Jim hands her the fewest
boxes, her body buckling under the weight. 

​

Wendy is the quietest 36C the plant has ever seen –
she can wear a skintight mini with a halter 

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and never make a sound. Her high, breathless

​

voice makes no impact among the carping yells –
the broads she’s stacked up against,
the ones who have stuffed bras for twenty-two years,
supporting husbands with a snap of their wrists –
simple as taking off an underwire, long before

​

we knew about carpal tunnel.

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My brother says Wendy gets a hard time
about her clothes, what she reveals 
in the factory’s windowless rooms
about her boyfriend of eighteen years,
how they’ll get married

​

when he gets a steady job, 

​

why she lives at home,

​

why he lives with his mother

​

why they’ve gone on dates

​

while six presidents have come and gone
in the White House
and they still say goodnight at the door.
My brother keeps running,
says yes to Wendy 

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and the other pleading eyes,
moving too fast to speak
above the conveyor –
brings back tags and boxes
stacked to his temples,
ones he knows will be left
untouched at day’s end.

​

It’s better than the hobby store –
thirteen years stocking inventory

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’til the notice. This is the union
and it’s harder to lose a job
here where the hard part’s already done –
cotton and silk sewn
on in China, flown in crates to loading
dock men in steel-toed boots,
to my brother prying open 

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the wooden folds to dangle

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the lace and satin – to Wendy’s silent
slip of her wrist – to the women waiting
with plastic tags, America’s last
mark
on the industry, pressed 

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in the creases of their raw

​

bent hands.

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​

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-Sandee Gertz Umbach, 2012