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ARTS AND CULTURE

Migrant factory worker's story

  • 06 August 2013

Overalls

For twenty-seven years she wore them. The factorythrust its bloody quota past her six days a week,and she did what she had to. The gloves and bootsand heavy denim became first and last lines of defence.She lost a thumb once, then a fingertip a year later.

Language didn't come into it. She got sick and sackedin the same fortnight, then lay doggo for a decade.When the bewildered husband finally gave out, she hidbehind her embarrassed teenagers until, at last,they went too. She appeared in language classes

where she made friends easily; one in particular.They married. She persevered with speakingand listening, wrote when needed, didn't read.Today, she finds a picture on a vocabulary sheetand tells the class all this. She's lucky, she says.

Frank Abel

 

Interval

As Stephen Boros told mewhen I was settled in his office,the world doesn't stopfor Stephen Boros,yet as he mildly peddleda plan for superannuationI felt a soft suspensionor an idling of the clock.A photograph in silver giltconspired to inspire admirationof the Boros family life:two tots anyonewould be a sucker for,an adolescent wife poutingand in slanting, smoky sunlight —a claw of golden proteasglowing in a pot. So who inall the world could saythat the world had never stoppedfor Stephen Boros?

Ross Jackson

 

hospice

your handin her

hand, somefluttering wilderness

behind hereyes that you

can't walkthrough

& we talkabout a visit

& a goodbyefrom the gaps

of years& circumstance

because of a past& this present

this timethe way things are

Rory Harris

Frank Abel lives in Hobart, and has previously taught English (ESL).

 

Ross Jackson is a retired schoolteacher from Perth. He has had poetry and short stories published locally and interstate.

 

Rory Harris is a poet and teacher. His poetry collections include Over the Outrow, From the Residence, Snapshots From a Moving Train, 16 poems, and Uncle Jack and Other Poems.

Meat image from Shutterstock